Alumni News - LAU Publications

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Mind the gap, Beirut
EDUCATION OF THE WHOLE PERSON
LAU firmly believes in the importance of moral and ethical values in the integral
development of each person. Continuously available counseling and the support
granted to a wide range of clubs and extracurricular activities ensure that each and
every student receives the proper training to develop leadership skills, build selfassurance, and determine who they choose to be in the world. With this comprehensive
approach to education, life after university can be met with competence and an
eagerness for active participation in intellectual discourse, professional advancement,
and the building of a better society.
www.lau.edu.lb
Embark, Explore, Discover
& alumni bulletin
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
FEATURES
6
CONTENTS
4
bringing Community into the Curriculum:
Social medicine at lau
9
Faculty Profile: mona Haidar at the front
lines of social medicine
14
uSaiD Grants lau nearly $7 million for
need-based Full Scholarships
15
Students take the lead: lau’s new
Outreach and Civic engagement unit sees
students becoming future leaders
16
State-of-the-art makeover:
umCRH: lau’s new teaching hospital
22
educating the next Generation of nurses
23
Donor Spotlights: Rima Hourani and Hala
and mohammad Finj
24
Campus notes
29
moving On: tarek na’was
30
brick and mortar: laying the foundations
of a vision
32
new appointments
34
Full-time Faculty Recruits
The menace of fake pharmaceuticals
37
Counterfeit drugs are common, dangerous, difficult
to detect, and lucrative both for manufacturers and
middlemen, explains Marc Abi Zeid.
Faculty Profile: aline Saad bringing
compassion to the field of pharmacy
38
the legacy and the Promise Campaign
44
lau expansion Spawns new Program
Offerings
46
lau medical School Features Simulation
training unique in lebanon
47
Regional Programming Contest Draws
Record-breaking turnout at lau
48
alumni Spotlights: Faiza Fawaz estrup and
Rony Zeenny
49
alumni events
53
alumni news
56
Why i Give back
Grand Rounds
Lebanese medical education in transition
Faced with brain drain, a physician glut,
over-specialization and a nursing shortage, medical
schools in Lebanon are looking to train physicians
with a commitment to community.
Curtis Brown reports.
10
Changing Faces
Beirut becoming a global cosmetic
surgery hub
Tracy Lynn Chemaly looks into the perilous allure
of a booming industry.
18
40
Pirate Pills
Up in Smoke
The high cost of a national vice
Increasingly taboo in many developed countries,
smoking is still ubiquitous in Lebanon. Emily Morris
reports on the consequences of addiction both for
individuals and the community.
page 1
LAU Magazine & Alumni Bulletin
Volume 13 | issue nº1 | Spring 2011
President
Joseph G. Jabbra
Wherever You Go
LAU Magazine is your platform to share photos and news about
yourself, your family and your friends. We encourage you to update
us on your professional and personal activities and achievements—
from wherever you are!
Help Tell Our History
We welcome news from alumni, friends, supporters and current and former
faculty and staff representing all the university’s current and former schools
and colleges. Submit your stories and photos for inclusion in LAU’s online
and print publications.
Submit to:
marcom@lau.edu.lb, or
Marketing and Communications Department
Lebanese American University
P.O. Box 13-5053/F24
Chouran, Beirut 1102-2801, Lebanon
New York Office
Lebanese American University
475 Riverside Drive #1846
New York, NY 10115-0065
Letters to the Editor
“i read your last issue cover to cover. i’m a big supporter of the creative and
performing arts and truly believe we have a niche and need to sustain it here at
lau. Good writing, varied but related topics, great all-around job.”
—elise Salem, Vice President, Student Development & enrollment management, lau
“i always wanted to congratulate you for the wonderful work you are doing
especially with the magazine. i always read it and have it at my desk. my clients
adore it and admire the content, quality of the printing and the layout.”
—Farid abboud (b.S. ’ 91), Systems analyst / Website developer
Corrections for LAU Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 3, Fall 2010
Fadi Shayya (author of At the Edge of the City, mentioned in “beirut’s Changing
Skyline” on p. 32) is an aub graduate in urban Design, not Graphic Design. the
book’s graphic designer is Danny Khoury, an lau graduate. the book cover
included in the article is from Beyroutes, a different book.
page 2
Editorial Advisory Board
Richard a. Rumsey, Vice President, University
Advancement
Peggy Hanna, Assistant Vice President,
Marketing and Communications
abdallah al Khal, Director, Alumni Relations
Gregory Houle, Manager, Advancement
Communications
edward Shiner, Director, Alumni and Special
Projects
Managing Editor
Curtis brown
Associate Editor
Zeina abdallah
Contributing Staff Writers
marc abi Zeid
Curtis brown
Greg Houle
nanor Karageozian
emily morris
Contributing Freelance Writers
tracy lynn Chemaly
michelle Harrane
Contributors
nayla abou merhi moujaes
anita nassar
Rita Sayyah
Editorial Assistants
Fidele Hamzeh
Ghazal Jbeily
Joseph Kanaan
nadine maknieh
Copy editors
Salma abdelnour
nanor Karageozian
Graphic Designer
marianne amkieh Siblini
Photographers
Zeina abdallah
marc abi Zeid
mazen Jannoun
bassam lahoud
emily morris
anthony Saoud
LAU Magazine is published quarterly by the
marketing and Communications Department
at lau and is distributed free of charge to
alumni, students, staff, faculty, friends and
supporters worldwide.
Direct comments can be sent to
marcom@lau.edu.lb.
LAU Magazine & Alumni Bulletin
marketing and Communications Department
lebanese american university
P.O. box 13-5053/F24
Chouran, beirut 1102-2801
lebanon
tel. +961 1 786 456 ext. 1940/1917
Fax +961 1 786 470
New York Office
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new York, nY 10115-0065
tel. +1 212 870 2592
Fax +1 212 870 2762
Please send changes of address to:
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From the President’s Desk
Dear Friends,
In a world of risk and instability, few things are as important to us as our health and that of
our loved ones. As the field of healthcare has matured, we have enjoyed a sustained period of
medical advances, allowing us to live longer and healthier lives. Notwithstanding this longterm record of improvement, we find ourselves faced with serious public health challenges
today.
Those who work in the healthcare system carry a serious burden, in Lebanon and throughout
the world. Nurses and doctors everywhere work punishing hours, sometimes neglecting their
own health to serve their patients. In Lebanon and elsewhere, nurses and other healthcare
professionals receive all too little in return for their service, in terms of both pay and prestige,
and many of the most talented and dedicated are moving abroad. Meanwhile, healthcare
professionals everywhere are increasingly burdened by an aging global population.
Every crisis presents an opportunity, however, and this is an excellent vantage point from
which to take stock of the last hundred years, consider the advances we’ve made and plan
for present and future challenges. Daunting though the latter may be, we are building the
institutional foundation for new solutions and new practices. In addition to pharmaceutical
research and development, doctors, nurses and researchers are pursuing and refining other
approaches to fighting disease, including preventative and palliative care. More attention is
given now to the implications of diet and exercise for disease, especially in light of rising rates
of obesity in the developing world. New ways of delivering basic care to needy populations
throughout the world are also being explored. Perhaps most importantly, we are witnessing a
resurgence of the field of social medicine, which seeks to understand not only the biological
causes of disease but also the social, political and economic factors contributing to it.
& alumni bulletin
Joseph G. Jabbra
President
Joseph G. Jabbra, Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury during the LAUMS groundbreaking ceremony
page 3
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
LAU is proud to be part of this effort, and our new medical and nursing schools are at the
cutting edge in incorporating social medicine into the curriculum. We believe the physician’s
calling is ethical as well as clinical and scientific, rooted not only in knowledge but wisdom.
Our students are learning to attend to the health both of the patient and the community,
and to understand the moral imperative of delivering care to all, regardless of means. This
humane vision of community-based care can be a transformative one for all of us as we turn
to the challenges of the 21st century.
Bringing Community into the
Curriculum: Social Medicine at LAU
LAU medical students visiting a health center in Byblos
Bringing Community into the
Curriculum: Social Medicine at LAU
By Emily Morris
A
round the world there are hundreds of millions of
people living in poverty, with poor access to education,
quality health care and support organizations. At LAU’s
Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine (SOM),
the physicians of tomorrow are learning that their responsibility
to a patient extends beyond diagnosing diseases and writing
prescriptions: they must also understand the context in which
the patient lives.
Such is the mantra of the Social Medicine and Global Health
Program, a relatively new component of the medical school’s
curriculum. According to Dr. Mona Haidar, director of the
program and an instructor at SOM, broader socioeconomic
and political forces affect the occurrence and course of most
diseases. These forces strongly influence who gets sick, what
diseases afflict them, what treatments are available to them,
and what are the likely outcomes of treatment.
“The unique vision of our medical school is to create a
different kind of physician. By that I mean someone who is
culturally compassionate as well as scientifically competent
and willing to serve the community,” Haidar explains. “So to us,
social medicine is as important to a physician’s formation as
anatomy and pathophysiology.”
An integrated course that runs through each of the four
page 4
years, the program aims to make social medicine as relevant
to the students’ clinical studies as possible. So far, the response
from the students has been positive. Last year, they formed a
club called the Social Medicine Society, with Haidar as adviser,
to determine what problems are affecting the health of their
community, so they can provide more sustainable solutions
for patients. The club organized LAU Byblos Health Day, with
medical students screening community members for diabetes
and hypertension.
At the School of Pharmacy (SOP), social medicine initiatives
have been under way since 2007, when the No Apathy
Pharmacy and Health Awareness Student Society (NAPHASS)
was formed by students and faculty to establish a relationship
between the community and LAU. For a pharmacist, it is
crucial to understand that socioeconomic conditions directly
affect a patient’s access to medication, according to Dr. Aline
Saad, chairperson of the Department of Pharmacy Practice and
a clinical assistant professor.
“Of course we have a solid practical component, but I’ve
found that involving the students in the community allows
them to retain the information much faster than using the
didactic approach alone,” says Saad. “It simply enhances their
overall experience.”
Hammoud hopes that with this kind of community outreach,
more hospitals, organizations and schools around Lebanon will
have full-time, trained social workers within the next five years.
Collaborating with other faculty and students could help in
achieving this goal. Both he and Haidar are on the steering
committee of a new initiative at LAU called inter-professional
education. In principle, the initiative will place students from
different disciplines (i.e. social work, medicine, pharmacy
and nursing) together in the community to complete their
fieldwork.
“The schools share the same concerns, same approach, same
philosophy,” Dr. Haidar says. “It would be ideal to put students
from different backgrounds together to teach them how best
to care for the patient.”
“We ought to be involved in the community.
We don’t live in an ivory tower; I like to
practice what I preach. And we give our
students the opportunity to do the same.”
—Hassan Hammoud, associate professor, School of Arts
and Sciences, LAU
page 5
& alumni bulletin
NAPHASS organizes various community outreach events
throughout the year, including an LAU Workers Health
Awareness Day and visits to SOS Children’s Villages, nursing
homes, hospitals and schools.
SOM and SOP are not the only schools at LAU seeking a
more active role in the community. Social work students are
required to take two practicums out in the field, such as at
a child advocacy organization or in a hospital, depending on
individual interest.
Dr. Hassan Hammoud, associate professor and head of the
social work program, is a strong advocate of this experiential
method of learning. “We ought to be involved in the
community. We don’t live in an ivory tower; I like to practice
what I preach. And we give our students the opportunity to do
the same,” he says.
Sabah Haidar, a social work major in her final year, had a
keen interest in the social component to medicine and is now
doing a practicum at American University of Beirut Medical
Center, an experience she describes as “amazing.” She works
in the hospital’s social services department, which assists
sick patients and their families psychologically, socially, and
sometimes financially.
“We have very oppressed, deprived patients with no
national health security. Medical care can run into the millions
sometimes. Our department has to find ways to cover costs,”
she says.
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
A rigorously holistic approach to medicine, pharmacy and social work is taking place at LAU,
challenging the next generation of health professionals to reach out to local communities.
F E AT U R E S
Grand Rounds
Lebanese medical education
in transition
By Curtis Brown
page 6
C
While opinions vary as to whether a new state-of-theart medical school is the answer to Lebanon’s health care
challenges, there is a general consensus that medical education
is in transition here, and — for both professional and ethical
reasons — must awaken to the needs of local communities.
Professor Samir Adib, a former professor of Université
Saint-Joseph who now works as a manager of the Department
of Public Health at the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi, says
Lebanese medical schools are still overly focused on training
and graduating secondary- and tertiary-care specialists, for
which domestic demand is limited. Such specialists typically do
their residency abroad, he says, and never return because their
specialty is saturated.
“The investment is thus lost for health in Lebanon. Ideally,
medical schools should reorient their expectations around
graduating community-oriented primary health care physicians
able to manage diseases, from education and prevention to
palliation and rehabilitation.”
Dr. Mona Haidar agrees. She recalls that 90% of her graduating
class at AUB left Lebanon to specialize abroad. Haidar, who
designed the social medicine component of LAU’s curriculum,
says the new school’s raison d’être is precisely to shape physicians
whose understanding of health is rooted not only in the science
of their specialization but in the social and ethical context of
their patient community.
Haidar says the LAU curriculum is at the Lebanese vanguard
in its incorporation of social medicine. “Increasingly, you find it
at other medical schools, but it’s not given as much weight as it
is here,” she says.
The increased stature of social medicine is part of a larger shift
toward an “integrated curriculum” — a more holistic approach
to medical education — that began in Western countries in the
late 1990s, says Dr. Ghassan Hamadeh, assistant dean of AUB’s
School of Medicine.
In an integrated curriculum “you’re taught to think clinical
early on — there isn’t this division between basic science and
clinical,” Hamadeh explains, adding that students have early
contact with patients, which in a classical curriculum typically
wouldn’t happen until the third year. Course “modules” are by
organ system, and emphasize “problem-based learning.” Rather
than studying anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology,
pathology and so on in separate courses, for example, a given
module might focus on the pulmonary system, with students
each in turn presenting on its anatomy, its physiology etc., to
arrive collectively at a comprehensive understanding.
page 7
& alumni bulletin
LAU medical students attending a working session
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
onsider this: Lebanon has a saturated physician job market
and one of the highest physician emigration rates in the
world. And yet its medical education capacity continues to
expand, as new medical schools — most notably in recent years
LAU’s — continue to open.
The apparent paradox has furrowed brows and prompted
questions. Is there a health-care-related “brain drain” in this
country, and if so what can be done to stanch it? What market
niche is left in the area of medical education? How healthy is the
health care system in Lebanon, and what can medical education
providers do to improve it?
To begin to answer such questions, one must understand that
medical education in Lebanon is at a crossroads.
Actually — with the factors in play ranging from emigration
and repatriation to efforts to “regionalize” health care delivery to
major shifts in medical school curricula both here and abroad
— it’s more like a six-way intersection with a roundabout, no
stoplights, and plenty of honking.
In a recent academic article, “Regionalizing Healthcare: A
Vision for Transforming Lebanon into a Regional Academic
Hub,” the founding dean of LAU’s new medical school addressed
some of these issues while arguing that a highly trained and
globalized Lebanese physician workforce “can turn threats into
opportunities.”
In view of the growing shortage of physicians in the Gulf
countries, as well as the difficulties prestigious American medical
schools and centers in the Gulf have had in recruiting clinicians
and faculty, Dr. Kamal Badr and his co-author proposed that
Lebanese medical schools establish “triangular collaboration”
between Gulf institutions and their North American counterparts,
making Lebanon into a regional academic hub.
The authors suggested that regional academic expansion
would not only help dissuade recent Lebanese medical graduates
from emigrating, but also encourage the repatriation of Lebanese
physicians abroad.
According to a “mission and vision” statement published by
LAU’s medical school, the apparent physician “glut” in Lebanon
is not all that it seems. Lebanese physicians’ levels of training
and competence are wildly uneven, almost a third are minimally
productive, and more than three quarters practice in the greater
Beirut area, while poorer and more rural areas suffer from a lack
of quality medical care.
LAU’s “vision for Lebanon” is fourfold: to raise standards
of Lebanese health care through high-quality American-style
medical education; to provide attractive residency and fellowship
opportunities to Lebanese medical graduates, thereby countering
the brain drain; to improve health care delivery to the country’s
underserved rural regions; and to mold compassionate, ethical,
and socially aware physicians.
“By inculcating community-based service in its training
program,” the school says, it plans to “extend its medical mission
to the underprivileged in Lebanon.”
Interim Dean Lynn Eckhert, who has worked for Harvard
Partners Medical International for years, says that LAU’s social
mission is reflective of a larger trend in medical education in
Western countries.
“Most medical schools are trying now to be more responsive
to the communities in which they practice,” she says.
Grand Rounds
LAU medical students attending a working session
Finally, Hamadeh stresses, an integrated curriculum is
weighted toward applied and interactive exams, for example
interviewing standardized patients. “You’re building thinking
skills, it’s person to person, with the emphasis on communication,
perceptiveness, and ethics.”
“Medical schools are trying now to be more
responsive to the communities in which they
practice.”
—Lynn Eckhert, interim dean, LAU School of Medicine
lau is in the enviable position of coming out of the gates with
an integrated curriculum, Hamadeh says, noting the challenges
aub has faced in transitioning from the classical.
lau has its sights set on yet another level of integration
— between its schools of medicine, nursing, and pharmacy.
When the medical building currently under construction on the
university’s byblos campus is complete, students in each program
will work with and train alongside one another, mirroring the way
the work of their professional counterparts is interwoven in a
hospital setting.
Dean eckhert has seen a similar form of integration in the
u.S., between students in parallel public health, nursing, and
medical programs. She extols the benefits of the model, saying
it produces not only experiential knowledge but also a “much
greater appreciation for the skills of another profession.”
appreciation and respect of this kind are critically important
in the case of the nursing profession, which among the medical
professions has been historically stigmatized in lebanon.
Hamadeh says that “the hospital is the kingdom of the nurse,”
but that people often don’t understand the level of education
involved in the profession.
“the work environment for nurses in many contexts needs
to be improved,” says Dr. Huda Huijer abu-Saad, director of the
Hariri School of nursing at aub. “and there’s a need for national
page 8
accreditation standards for schools of nursing. along with the
misplaced — but unfortunately persistent — negative image of
nursing, these things discourage young people from pursuing it
as a career.”
Several physicians and academics interviewed for this article
remarked on the increasing relevance of the humanities — with
their traditional focus on intuition, wisdom, ethical insight, and
integrated formal elegance — to the new paradigms of medical
education.
université Saint-Joseph’s curriculum has gone the furthest in
this direction, providing, according to adib, up to 40% of credit
hours to humanities courses. alongside basic medical courses
in anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology, students must take
electives in subjects ranging from art, culture, language, and
history of religions, to sociology and its application to medicine.
“i see a convergence between medicine and the humanities,
more now than ever before,” says Hamadeh. Whether the brain of
a renaissance man is less likely than that of a specialist to drain
westward from the levant remains to be seen, but that is the
vision of those working to improve lebanese medical education,
and the goal is a worthy one.
Deans of medical schools in Lebanon and the region meeting at LAU
LAU Faculty Profile
Mona Haidar
At the front lines of social medicine
by Curtis brown
Giving a speech on AIDS Day in Bobete
social medicine were a big success. “it was the first time we
exposed the clinical community to that language,” she says.
Her aub preceptor Dr. Kamal badr was particularly supportive,
and close collaboration between the two continued after her
residency and right up through the 2009 inauguration of lau’s
medical school, where badr was founding dean.
“Any idea without support at the level of
leadership will not survive.”
the idea for making social medicine an integral part of lau’s
curriculum evolved over those years. Haidar traveled to lesotho
in 2006 to help establish a rural aiDS clinic. She worked there with
the boston-based Partners in Health (PiH), whose co-founder, the
renowned physician and medical anthropologist Paul Farmer, has
been a major source of inspiration.
Describing lesotho as the “most daunting” of PiH’s rural sites,
Farmer says Haidar’s “talent, experience, and knowledge” were
crucial to the clinic’s success. “She has also served as a living link
between the people of lesotho and research and training centers
like lau and Harvard,” he says.
Following her 2006–2007 stint in africa, Haidar set off for
boston to work further with Farmer and his colleagues in PiH
and Harvard’s Department of Social medicine. upon receiving
her master’s in Public Health at Harvard in 2009, she returned
immediately to work on the lau curriculum.
“We have the advantage at lau that it’s a new medical
school,” Haidar says, explaining that institutional inertia can
make curricular innovation more difficult to implement.
“any idea without support at the level of leadership will not
survive. it is institutional support that makes something grow,
and ultimately have an impact.”
page 9
& alumni bulletin
—Mona Haidar, instructor, LAU School of Medicine
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
When Dr. mona Haidar, in the midst of her residency in internal
medicine at aub, proposed to deliver grand rounds on the topic
of social medicine, the idea raised eyebrows.
“Grand rounds in residency usually requires a hard-core
scientific topic, something like stem-cell research,” she explains.
Social medicine — which seeks to understand disease not merely
at the molecular level but also as a function of large-scale “social
determinants” — was initially a tough sell.
that was 2006. less than a half decade later, Haidar would
be helping to lay the groundwork for lau’s new medical school,
which — as a direct result of her role — is a regional pioneer
in incorporating social medicine into the very fabric of the
curriculum.
the years between — which took Haidar to lesotho in the
southern tip of africa, to boston, massachusetts and Harvard
university, and back to beirut — were transformative for Dr.
Haidar.
they may prove to have been equally transformative for
medical education in lebanon.
if your idea of a physician is a white-coated specialist with
an air of institutional authority, even a touch of paternalism,
then Haidar may not seem like much of a physician at all. She
is unassuming and low-key, but at the same time charismatic,
exuding an egoless intensity.
Her frame of reference is as often ethical or aesthetic as it
is scientific. You sense this when she talks about “the beauty
of integration” in lau’s medical school curriculum, or recalls
delivering babies by candlelight in africa, or describes aiDS as a
“barometer of injustice and human-rights violations,” or evokes
the way root structural forces determining health and disease
cease to be abstract — and instead become palpable and visceral
— the moment you set foot in a refugee camp. Her conversation
tends to be jeweled with metaphor.
notwithstanding the initial skepticism, her grand rounds on
F E AT U R E S
Changing Faces
Beirut becoming a global
cosmetic surgery hub
By Tracy Lynn Chemaly
page 10
W
School of Arts and Sciences
Noting the importance placed on external beauty in Lebanon,
Sibai recalls that before the operation even her mother used to
cry at the sight of her.
According to Dr. Ketty Sarouphim, associate professor of
psychology at LAU, the pressure to fit in physically is especially
acute for girls. “Unfortunately we’re not raised to think that we’re
judged for who we are,” she says.
The popular image of plastic surgery as the province of aging
beauties hoping to preserve their youth is not really accurate in
Lebanon, according to Sarouphim. The typical candidate is in late
adolescence or early adulthood. With the country’s ratio of young
women to men believed to be six to one, she says, the race is on
to “increase your chances of a good catch.”
Though Sarouphim laments the societal trend, she concedes
that surgery can enhance individual self-confidence and needn’t
entail psychological harm. “It’s not necessarily different from
dieting — if you can afford it!” she says. She notes however
the risk of developing body dysmorphic disorder, a pathological
disorder involving excessive preoccupation with perceived defects
in one’s physical features.
Dr. Hayek insists that it is the physician’s job to prevent
patients from doing anything excessive. “If the result of an
operation is going to be bad, it’s my responsibility to tell my
patient. Sometimes people simply become addicted to surgery.
They come to me saying, ‘Can’t you just do something?’”
Mohamad Hodeib, a 20-year-old political science and
international affairs student at LAU, is opposed in principle to
such procedures. He is bemused by the flaunting of plastic surgery
on campus. “Nose jobs are the most popular — but wearing the
sticker after the operation is even more popular!”
Although Hodeib had surgery on his own nose two years ago,
it was for breathing purposes only, and he ensured the surgeon
didn’t change its exterior form. “I would never fool around
with my shape. I was created this way,” says Hodeib, noting
his classmates’ predilection for straightening their aquiline
Mediterranean noses.
Dr. Hayek confirms that some patients cite breathing problems
as a pretext for changing the shape of their noses, but points out
that the two issues are in fact rarely related.
page 11
& alumni bulletin
“Unfortunately, we’re not raised to think that
we’re judged for who we are.”
—Ketty Sarouphim, associate professor of Psychology, LAU
Plastic surgery under celioscopy
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
hen Rahaf Abdallah was crowned Miss Lebanon 2010
after answering a question about plastic surgery at
the pageant finale, there was widespread speculation
that her eloquence on the subject had secured her victory
over the odds-on favorite, Jessica Kahawaty. Half a year later,
Abdallah, a third-year business management student at LAU,
stands firmly behind her response.
“I support plastic surgery treating injuries, defects or
disfigurement, but I am not a fan of it for purely cosmetic
purposes,” says the 22-year-old. Abdallah believes beauty takes
many forms, stressing that “it’s just not normal to see people
walking around with the same noses and lips.”
It was an appropriate — if pointed — question to put to
beauty contestants in a country that has become, according to a
recent French report, the plastic surgery capital of the world.
An estimated 1.5 million surgeries are now conducted every
year in Lebanon. The boom shows no signs of abating, as offshoot
industries such as “plastic surgery tourism” begin to take root.
Even banks are getting in on the action, with some offering
surgery loans of up to $5000.
Dr. Naji Hayek, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at the
University Medical Center – Rizk Hospital in Beirut, confirms
that cosmetic surgery — in particular rhinoplasty — is a booming
industry in Lebanon. Hayek alone performs 10 to 15 “nose jobs”
a month.
“In America it’s the breasts; In Lebanon it’s the nose,” he
laughs.
Hayek has worked in both countries over the past 12 years,
and notes a shift in Lebanese attitudes and social mores during
this period. “It used to be taboo to have work done, and most
people would try to hide it. Now they don’t care — they’re proud
of it.”
Farah Sibai, a 21-year-old LAU business management student,
is forthcoming about her stomach staple and bypass surgery. “I’d
tried diets, pills and exercise,” she says, “but my metabolism is
zero.”
Sibai has shed 24 kilograms since the $6000 procedure, and
feels her life has turned around. “People look at me differently,
I have more self-confidence, and I can actually shop for clothes
now. I used to be ashamed of how I looked.”
Changing Faces
Press ad of plastic surgery loans from a local bank
As the ubiquity of nose “stickers” attests, however, a great
many feel no need to fashion excuses or pretexts for going under
the knife. Twenty-three-year-old human resources practitioner
Nathalie Chelala freely admits that she had her nose fixed “for
pleasure.”
“When something is bothering me and I can fix it within limits,
I will do it,” she says, still slightly swollen from the operation she
underwent six weeks previously.
Melanie Tabet, a 23-year-old sales executive, had her lips
enlarged at the age of 21. “They were very small, so I started with
one injection, but they were still small, so I ended up doing it
three times,” she says, adding that she will probably redo them in
five years’ time. “It’s made me feel much prettier and more selfconfident. I can wear red lipstick now!”
Tabet was initially encouraged to have the collagen injections
by a friend who had undergone the same procedure. She remarks
however that her friend’s lips are “overdone,” out of proportion
with the rest of her face. The observation leads to more general
misgivings. “Some people don’t need to do it,” Tabet reflects. “It’s
becoming too much.”
Dr. Hayek acknowledges the risks of cosmetic surgery. “A
surgeon is not God, so there’s always the chance of infection,
bleeding, swelling and scarring. It’s important to choose your
surgeon well and to have realistic expectations.” He advises
patients to avoid permanent lip fillers, which are dangerous and
can lead to infections, recommending as an alternative collagen
injections that require refilling every year.
page 12
The reputation of Lebanon’s plastic surgery industry dates
back to the country’s civil war days. During that period, however,
most procedures were reconstructive rather than cosmetic. The
reverse is true today, of course, and as Beirut has grown into a
glamorous international mecca for cosmetic surgery, a boutique
tourist industry has grown up around it.
“Sometimes people simply become addicted to
surgery. They come to me saying, ‘Can’t you
just do something?’”
—Naji Hayek, plastic and reconstructive surgeon, UMC–RH
Zeina El Haj, founder of Image Concept, a cosmetic surgery
tourism company based in Dubai, has since June 2009 been
organizing surgery-and-recovery trips to Beirut from the Gulf
countries as well as Canada, North Africa and Australia, under
the auspices of the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism. Less than two
years into the venture, she is turning a brisk trade, with two to
three clients per week.
Cosmetic surgery tourists stay in Beirut for approximately
10 days after their surgery — sightseeing, shopping and eating
out — with only the slimmest chance of being recognized. El
Haj notes that a surprising number of clients — she estimates
between 30 and 40 percent — are male.
& alumni bulletin
Some of Dr. Hayek’s clients bring their families along and make
a summer holiday of it, with the most popular bookings coming
for rhinoplasty, breast lifts or augmentations and liposuction.
“lebanon has the best surgeons in the field,” Dr. Hayek says of
the popularity of such tourism, adding that the country itself is
an attraction. “lebanon is a trendy place, and its decadent image
goes hand in hand with the spirit of freedom associated with
cosmetic surgery.” Procedures are generally cheaper in lebanon,
moreover. a nose job that would cost approximately $9,000 in
new York, for example, costs only $2,000 in beirut.
as for the older generation’s love affair with botox and
facelifts, Dr. Sarouphim describes this as a classical symptom of
midlife crisis. “they’re afraid their husbands will look at younger
women without wrinkles, and they feel the pressure to compete
with other botoxed ladies. it’s a continuous struggle to remain
young.” She warns that having work done at an older age is more
dangerous. “it’s fighting something that cannot be fought.”
abdallah agrees: “i have seen many who have had work done
with the aim of looking younger, but the question is: did they end
up looking younger or looking fixed?”
now there’s a question for the judges.
page 13
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
Figures for the Figure
USAID Grants LAU Nearly $7 Million
for Need-based Full Scholarships
USAID Grants LAU Nearly $7 Million
for Need-based Full Scholarships
by marc abi Zeid
Fifty-two students will enter lau tuition-free next year as part
of a first-time uSaiD program to provide university education
to economically disadvantaged lebanese from public schools
throughout the country.
uSaiD informed lau in late September that the university
had won the $6.9 million grant to execute the program, which
will educate one female and one male student from each of
lebanon’s 26 districts. in order to qualify, the students must
demonstrate leadership potential and meet a host of other
requirements.
“We developed a strong application,” says Dr. elise Salem, vice
president for Student Development and enrollment management
at lau, explaining why she believes lau won the grant. “but
lau also has a track record in leadership development. We are
becoming known not only as a university of high academic
standards, but of student-centeredness as well.”
the program is designed not only to provide educational
opportunities to disadvantaged students but also to facilitate
the country’s long-term development, by cultivating the kinds
of knowledge and expertise deemed critical to — and presently
lacking in — lebanon. With this goal in mind, students will be
required to select from a restricted list of majors, which will
include engineering, education, nursing, social work, nutrition,
business, economics and communication arts.
“this grant really is well-aimed because it’s going for needy
kids across lebanon to do good, not just for themselves but for
their communities,” Salem adds, “and at a university that can
help transform their lives and the lives of their families.”
to be eligible for selection, the students must come from
very low-income families, score a minimum of 12/20 on the
lebanese baccalaureate, obtain qualifying Sat and eee scores,
hold lebanese citizenship and be fairly proficient in english.
the selected students will receive stipends and have their
tuition, housing, books and most other expenses covered by the
program.
page 14
“it is lau’s belief that no student should be denied a worldclass education due to financial circumstances,” says abdo Ghié,
lau assistant vice president for enrollment management. “it is
our duty to help each and every student achieve their educational
goals.”
“We decided to make the investment for our youth,” says Zeina
Salame, project manager for uSaiD at the american embassy
in beirut. “it’s about promoting educational opportunities for
promising young people who graduate from public schools and
cannot afford to attend a university.”
She adds that the program is in line with uSaiD’s current fiveyear strategy for lebanon, in its emphasis on support for basic
and higher education.
the program is being executed in stages. after securing the
grant, lau began the advertising and recruitment phase.
in november, teams of recruiters were dispatched throughout
the country to visit hundreds of schools and spread news of the
opportunity. Once applications are submitted, 10 students will
initially be chosen from each district, then shortlisted to two
after a rigorous selection process.
When the selected students arrive at lau next fall, the
responsibilities for overseeing them will shift to the newly
established Outreach and Civic engagement (OCe) unit. the unit
will first be tasked with integrating the new recruits into lau
with the help of student mentors, although the long-term goal of
OCe will be to develop the leadership skills of those students.
“by giving leadership skills to these new students, we’re giving
them an equal opportunity to be integrated into an affluent
university, while at the same time putting them in contact with
civil society to become leaders of tomorrow’s lebanon,” says elie
Samia, OCe executive director.
“but working with an affluent society is not enough,” he adds.
“We need to show philanthropy by helping the underprivileged.
this is part of our integrity, our legacy.”
Students Take the Lead
> LAU MUN leaders giving an awareness session
Students Take the Lead
LAU’s new Outreach and Civic Engagement unit sees
students becoming future leaders
count toward their degrees at lau. travel, exposure and experience
“take them out of the cocoon of their society,” says Samia.
the un Fair at lau aims to be similarly enriching, exposing
students to 22 organizations and specialized agencies that offer
new experiences and sought-after internships.
in addition, a leadership training program took place in
December, in collaboration with the Safadi Foundation, where
children from 54 public and private schools in tripoli and Sidon
were trained by lau students in conflict resolution, peace
education, public speaking and leadership.
in much the same way, the lau model united nations
program (mun) reaches 1,350 youths in grades 10 and 11, who
come from 150 schools to learn public-speaking skills from lau
students. the grade-schoolers act as ambassadors while calling
for resolutions in the un.
One of these lau student trainers, Sandy Hanna, has been
part of the mun program for three years. “i have watched
people enter as students and leave as ‘stand-up-for-what’s-right’
individuals,” she says, adding that the program has helped build
her own individuality, as well as her CV.
Rindala mikhael, another student involved in OCe projects,
said that each presents different opportunities. She said the whiteribbon campaign to end violence against women offered her new
insights into gender discrimination and female empowerment,
and allowed her to engage in an international project that involved
numerous countries and organizations. mikhael describes OCe
projects as “boosting my confidence, enhancing my knowledge
and giving me a taste of practical work.”
Which is precisely the point, according to Samia. “lau should
not only provide a classical education, but also build on students’
character, emotional intelligence and sense of volunteerism. We
want them to serve society.”
page 15
& alumni bulletin
Philanthropy, leadership and student activism are on the rise at
lau, thanks in part to the formation of the new Outreach and
Civic engagement unit (OCe). established in October 2010, OCe
is galvanizing student action for the benefit of society, while
equipping lau students with necessary leadership skills for
today’s competitive environment.
elie Samia, OCe executive director, describes it as a studentcentered unit involved in the creation of future leaders. “it aims
at engaging students with civil society and adds the kind of
extracurricular activities that build a well-rounded personality,”
he says.
Comprising two divisions — international exchange and Study
abroad, and Civic engagement and leadership — the unit is run
by three administrative staff, 20 part-time student employees and
hundreds more who participate in its activities.
Dr. elise Salem, vice president for Student Development and
enrollment management at lau, is enthusiastic about Samia’s
role: “He’s nurturing and developing students who have limitless
potential.”
Samia agrees that this generation of students is unusually
ambitious. “the beauty of this unit is that we provide the spark —
we coach, facilitate and motivate the students — but they’re the
ones with the passion and energy to run their projects. they’re
active, creative and competent, and this becomes a snowball of
positive energy because their enthusiasm is so contagious.”
OCe projects tackle a variety of issues, from environment
cleanup to human rights, youth empowerment to violence
against women. “the unit is already a beehive of student activism
with a wonderful, creative spirit,” says Salem.
the student-exchange program within OCe aims to connect
students with ivy league universities in america, allowing them
to attend institutions such as Princeton and Yale for credits that
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
by tracy lynn Chemaly
State-of-the-Art Makeover
State-of-the-Art Makeover
UMC–RH: LAU’s new teaching hospital
By Curtis Brown
If you speak to anyone involved in laying the foundations of
innovative medical education at LAU, they’ll tell you the same
thing: that it’s liberating to be starting from scratch. There’s no
institutional inertia, no messy transitional period, no puzzle of
how to overhaul the engine of a car you’re driving at full speed.
Everyone, that is, except those responsible for transforming
the well-established, decades-old Rizk Hospital into University
Medical Center – Rizk Hospital (UMC–RH), a state-of-the-art
teaching hospital and mini-campus, all the while keeping it open
and fully operational.
“It’s easier to build something new than to fix something
already in existence, especially if it’s been around a long time,”
says Roy Majdalani, LAU vice president of Human Resources
and University Services and member of the hospital’s board
of directors, who is in charge of renovating the hospital’s IT
systems.
“What’s the next big challenge on the horizon?” asks Dr.
Elie Badr rhetorically. Badr, LAU assistant provost for Academic
Programs and acting dean of the School of Architecture and
Design and a member of UMC–RH’s Board of Directors, is
responsible for the building’s structural renovations. “The biggest
challenge on my horizon is when the hammers start pounding in
radiology, and pound for two months, with patient rooms directly
above.”
Majdalani, Badr, and other members of UMC–RH’s Board
of Directors say that Rizk Hospital — of which LAU recently
became majority shareholder — has an established reputation
for talented physicians and quality care in Beirut, but agree that
page 16
the decades have taken their toll on its infrastructure.
“We are renovating all facilities physically, technically, and at
the IT level,” Majdalani says.
But the biggest challenge in turning a city hospital into a
regional academic medical center, Majdalani says, is not one of
renovation but transformation.
“For us, UMC–RH is not just a hospital. It will be a backbone
to our academic institution, working hand in hand with LAU in
its commitment to academic excellence and outstanding medical
care.”
UMC–RH will support LAU’s schools of Medicine, Nursing,
and Pharmacy provide the clinical environment and service for
teaching and training for health care students and professionals,
and support academic research programs.
“UMC–RH will be a landmark in a country
already well-known as the medical hub of the
Middle East.”
—Roy Majdalani, member, Board of Directors, UMC–RH
The scope of the transformation, directors say, is both
daunting and exhilarating, a testament to LAU’s ambition as it
enters the field of medical education.
The new equipment and infrastructure will include two MRI
machines, gamma cameras, a mammography unit, an advanced
ophthalmology clinic, a refurbished emergency room and
intensive care unit, a new nurse-call system and new operating
well-known hospital. in order to facilitate this, lau conducted the
hospital’s first HR Study.
“the study was designed to revamp the structure of umC–RH,
and will be used to provide its employees with equity, fairness,
incentive for retention, and progression and advancement within
the institution,” says Dr. Cedar mansour, lau’s vice president and
general counsel of umC–RH.
Other steps are being taken to strengthen human resources
both at the medical and administrative levels.
“We are hiring additional top-notch physicians trained in the
u.S. and europe, who will join the highly skilled medical body
already in place at the hospital,” says majdalani. He adds that
there will be continuous education and training for the nursing
team, too, as well as additional hires.
the directors point out that an institutional makeover
as extensive as this goes beyond questions of training and
personnel.
“You have to change the culture of the institution. it’s a state
of mind,” says antoine Choueiry, umC–RH’s general director.
“it’s not only know-how and training.”
Dr. Zreick agrees that the issue is not one of technical
credentials but rather institutional culture. “this hospital has
a tradition of clinical care to the community,” he says, but the
challenge is to “inject academics into its way of thinking.”
umC–RH aims to retain as many of the hospital’s original
staff as possible, and is providing yearlong training to improve
their english skills. meanwhile most of the physicians have been
offered either full-time or part-time positions with lau.
“One of the most important goals for us was to integrate
and capitalize on what gave the hospital its good name — the
medical staff and the workers there,” says Dr. mansour.
“Our intent is to integrate everybody and to grow together.”
page 17
& alumni bulletin
rooms. the data center — “a closet with a couple of servers
stacked up, almost like a mom-and-pop operation” when
majdalani began his work — will be state-of-the-art, and there
will be high-speed wired and wireless network infrastructure
throughout the facility, fully backed up by lau’s servers. the
current capacity of 100 beds will increase to 250.
and when the hammer blows ringing through the old
radiology lab finally subside, there will be a 1500-square-meter
regional “center of excellence,” digitally linked to a world-class
radiology lab in new York. badr points out that the advanced
radiology equipment being installed is one of a kind, available
only in Germany.
“the trend now in medical care is centers of excellence,”
explains Dr. tony Zreick, medical director of umC–RH, “where
specialists in different aspects of the same problem come
together in one center.” umC–RH will have a breast unit, for
example, with a breast imaging expert, a surgeon, a gynecologist,
an oncologist, a clinical psychologist, and so on, all of whom are
breast specialists.
umC–RH will have 10 regional centers in all, including
a cardiovascular center, a women’s health center, and a
neuroscience center.
“umC–RH will be a landmark in a country already well-known
as the medical hub of the middle east,” majdalani says.
“every unit we are newly establishing or redesigning corforms
to international norms so that the hospital can be accredited by
the JCi,” says badr, referring to the u.S.-based Joint Commission
international, the premier accreditation organization for
international hospitals.
the transformation is not only infrastructural but also
institutional, directors say. this means a large-scale humanresources task of assimilating personnel from an established and
Educational sessions at UMC–RH
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
LAU president giving a talk at UMC–RH
F E AT U R E S
Pirate Pills
The menace of fake
pharmaceuticals
page 18
By Marc Abi Zeid
In a separate conference three months later, Khalife
announced a number of measures being taken to counter the
phenomenon. He promised that the ministry would place tags
on all medication specifying its origin in order to track sources
more easily. He also said pharmacies would be permitted to sell
medicine approaching its expiration date at a discounted rate,
with the approval of the ministry.
All ministry actions, Khalife said, are being undertaken with
the cooperation of concerned agencies and unions.
“The main reason pharmacists exist is to protect and help
people,” he said. “Any pharmacists who compromise public
health through illegal actions, selling counterfeit and smuggled
drugs, or manipulating prices, will receive the maximum penalties
associated with their crimes.”
page 19
& alumni bulletin
“Lebanon is the leader in combating counterfeit
drugs in the region.”
—Rony Zeenny, clinical assistant professor of pharmacy, LAU
He vowed that the ministry would “not allow the actions of a
few to jeopardize the reputation of Lebanon’s pharmacists.”
Armand Phares, president of the Lebanese Pharmaceuticals
Importers Association, says that it is the responsibility of
pharmacists and importers alike to “remain vigilant, to inform
public authorities and the public itself, and to take appropriate
measures to stop the spread of such dangerous products.”
“They are the most efficient prevention against the presence
of such products in the market,” he adds.
Government investigators believe the sale of counterfeit
drugs is part of an elaborate scheme run by a large organized
network of smugglers operating under the radar.
Since pharmacies buy smuggled drugs at a fraction of their
market price, the government believes they are doing so with full
knowledge and complicity.
Dr. Majdalani says the problem is directly related to lack of
universal health care, which creates acute demand for cheap
drugs and a high toleration for risk. “If we look at France,
for example, where they have universal care, they don’t
encounter this issue,” he says, citing for contrast a World Health
Organization study’s conclusion that 200,000 people die each
year in Africa as a result of counterfeit drugs.
“In my opinion, the solution to this problem is to expand
the National Social Security Fund to cover the entire Lebanese
population,” he adds. “This is the ultimate goal.”
In the meantime, Majdalani says, the government needs to
continue its investigations, more closely monitoring what comes
through the borders as well as what is being sold in pharmacies,
clinics, hospitals and warehouses.
“Still,” Majdalani says, “this is only a partial and temporary
solution to the problem.”
The sweeps of pharmacies and drug warehouses have turned
up all kinds of counterfeit drugs, including those used for cancer
and cardiovascular disease.
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
F
ake drugs. They’re dangerous, sometimes deadly, and in
many cases, nearly undetectable.
The problem has probably existed in Lebanon for
decades, though long periods of conflict and absent government
have prevented action. Organized efforts to address the issue
began taking shape in recent years, though a clear, long-term
strategy remains elusive.
“It’s been a problem for a long time,” says Dr. Atef Majdalani,
head of the Parliamentary Health Committee.
He explains that the government launched a campaign
several years ago to address the issue of counterfeit drugs, held
a special meeting with the Lebanese Order of Pharmacists and
Prosecutor General’s Office, and created a committee to control
and monitor the sale of medication.
Their efforts led to the closure of several pharmacies and
pharmaceutical warehouses, but the initiative proved shortlived.
“As is always the case in Lebanon, they soon stopped
investigating the issue and everything returned to how it was
before,” Majdalani says.
The lull was not to last. In January of last year a counterfeit
version of the heart medication Plavix — containing just 40% of
the active ingredient — was found first in the possession of one
pharmacy, then in a number of others. The scandal prompted the
Lebanese Minister of Health, Dr. Mohammed Khalifeh, to hold a
news conference.
“We can’t be silent about this subject. It has become a matter
of life or death,” Khalife announced, adding that the counterfeit
heart medication was manufactured in China and smuggled into
Lebanon through Dubai.
Khalife called for a large-scale crackdown. In the ensuing
sweep, nine pharmacies and four pharmaceutical warehouses
were shut down.
According to Khalife, the manufacturing and smuggling of
counterfeit medicine is part of an organized drug ring involving
university graduates with degrees in the medical field. He added
that all pharmacists selling counterfeit drugs were doing so
knowingly.
Pirate Pills
They have also discovered another form of pharmaceutical
fraud. Diet pills advertised as pure herbal slimming agents were
discovered to indeed contain drug components used in diet
pills with known side effects.
“It’s another form of counterfeiting — it’s cheating the
public,” Dr. Rony Zeenny, clinical assistant professor at LAU’s
School of Pharmacy, says.
In many cases, counterfeit pharmaceuticals are extremely
difficult to detect. Much of the contraband is imported to
Lebanon through legal channels rather than smuggled, and
appears authentic to the naked eye.
Furthermore, the 3D holograms that show the Lebanese
Pharmaceuticals Importers Association’s name, the importer’s
name, and the motto “from the producer to the citizen” written
in Arabic — which were introduced as an anti-counterfeiting
measure in 2004 — have themselves been forged, making it
difficult for even experts to spot the fake.
It’s not just counterfeit pharmaceuticals that are of concern
to authorities. Some drugs may be genuine, but enter the
country illegally.
“Hiding original pharmaceuticals duly registered at the
Ministry of Public Health from the administrative controls of
the customs and the ministry raises serious questions regarding
their safety and conformity with the registered standards,” says
Phares.
In the face of Lebanon’s debilitating drug debacle, some may
find solace in learning that the country is far ahead of other
Arab countries when it comes to action and awareness.
“Lebanon is the leader in combating counterfeit drugs in the
page 20
region,” Zeenny says, noting that the country was the first in the
Middle East to bring the topic to light.
“It’s a worldwide issue — we’re not the only ones dealing
with counterfeit drugs,” he adds, “but we are definitely more
aware of it due to the campaigns launched to bring attention
to this issue.”
The frightening reality exposed by the investigations raises
the question of how medical professionals, entrusted by the
public and sworn under oath to serve with compassion and
care, could betray their moral duties.
“We can’t be silent about this subject. It has
become a matter of life or death.”
—H.E. Mohamed Khalifeh, Lebanese Minister of Public Health
LAU’s School of Pharmacy requires each student to pass
a rigorous course in ethics tailored specifically to their field,
providing a comprehensive background to the dilemmas facing
pharmacists.
Dr. Lydia Sholy, clinical assistant professor at LAU’s School
of Pharmacy who teaches the ethics course, says they don’t
directly address the issue of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, but
attention is given to the pharmacists’ moral and professional
responsibilities.
“We cover the code of ethics for clinical practice point by
point, examining the duties you have toward your society
and toward your profession,” Sholy says. “We don’t talk about
& alumni bulletin
Press ad produced by the health authorities
page 21
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
counterfeit drugs as a topic unto itself. We convey that you are
responsible for everything you give to your patient, so making
sure that it’s the right drug is part of your responsibility.”
Sholy explains that getting students to care requires more
than simply lecturing them. Her technique is to delve into the
history of ethics to help students understand why medical
professionals abide by certain procedures such as informed
consent and confidentiality.
For example, the class looks at the infamous Tuskegee
syphilis experiment in the United States, in which American
doctors studied the progression of the syphilis disease in poor
black sharecroppers over a period of 40 years, from 1932 to
1972. The subjects were never told they had syphilis, and were
never treated.
When students examine cases like Tuskegee — or the
Nuremberg trials where German doctors were tried for their
involvement in human experimentation — they gain a larger
sense of the ethical code’s implications, Sholy says.
“They come to me and say, ‘we’ve never thought of it this
way.’”
Educating the Next Generation
of Nurses
Educating the
Next Generation
of Nurses
By Marc Abi Zeid
human development to take care of patients. They don’t just
give them bed baths and walk them around. Our students will
learn how to access the latest research in nursing and health care,
evaluate it, and apply it to improve care for patients.”
The prerequisites for the B.S. in Nursing include courses in
chemistry, biology, nutrition, human development and psychology.
They also complete LAU’s liberal arts core, which enables them to
develop their critical thinking skills.
“Nursing combines both affection and scientific knowledge.
With a growing number of people getting sick, more nurses are
needed to perform a variety of duties to contribute to a more
rapid healing process,” says Kazandjian, the nursing student,
explaining why he decided to pursue a career in the field.
The establishment of the Nursing School alongside the schools
of Pharmacy and Medicine creates opportunities for students to
study and train together through shared experiences in courses,
and during hands-on exercises at University Medical Center –
Rizk Hospital and other hospitals. The school has developed a
“What many people don’t understand is
strong partnership with the nursing department at UMC–RH
so that the hospital’s nursing staff can assist and serve as role
that nurses use scientific knowledge and
models for the students.
contemporary research findings.”
“With our unique interdisciplinary model, students will be
—Nancy Hoffart, Dean, School of Nursing, LAU
prepared to communicate effectively with other team members
to maximize patient care,” says Ola Sukkarieh, faculty member at
To help attract qualified applicants regardless of their financial the Nursing School. “Students will be exposed to other disciplines
situation, the university covered half the tuition costs of all through theoretical courses and will practice skills in simulation
admitted students. In addition to these automatic scholarships, labs as well.”
a handful of private donors agreed to pay the remaining tuition
costs for many of the students, resulting in free education for
“LAU’s scholarship program made it possible for
almost everyone.
The donor support and the push by the university to ensure me to attend the university.”
the success of the nursing program came largely in response to —Chant Kazandjian, LAU nursing student
the severe shortage of nurses worldwide.
According to Dr. Nancy Hoffart, founding dean of the Nursing
Another feature of the Nursing School is the co-op model,
School, some of the donors decided to invest in the program
because of their own past experiences with poorly trained nurses. which will allow students to perform nursing tasks at hospitals
The donors were convinced that LAU’s scientific curriculum under supervision. According to Sukkarieh, this additional handswould provide students with the medical background and skills on experience will allow students to “enhance their clinical
judgment and utilize their clinical skills effectively.”
to properly treat patients.
“Co-op bridges the gap between theory and practice,” she
“What many people don’t understand is that nurses use
scientific knowledge and contemporary research findings,” adds. “It’s a feature of our Nursing School that strongly prepares
Hoffart says. “They must understand not only normal physiology, students for the nursing practice early on.”
pathophysiology, and pharmacology, but also psychology and
LAU seemed like the obvious choice for the 13 young men and
women representing the founding class of the Alice Ramez
Chagoury School of Nursing, which opened its doors in fall
2010.
With the prospect of receiving automatic 50 percent
scholarships, interdisciplinary learning and hands-on training
opportunities at hospitals across Lebanon, students jumped
at the opportunity to become the next generation of highly
skilled nurses while making history as pioneers of the new LAU
program.
“LAU’s scholarship program made it possible for me to attend
the university,” says Chant Kazandjian, a nursing student, who also
cited the school’s “modern form of study, the interdisciplinary
experiences between nursing, pharmacy, medicine, nutrition and
social work students, and the cooperative learning experiences in
hospitals” as factors in his decision.
page 22
Donor Profiles
Rima Hourani
Opens doors to Palestinian students from the refugee camps
By LAU Staff
LAU alumna Rima Hourani donated $200,000 in October to
fully sponsor the education of four Palestinian students from
refugee camps who recently matriculated at LAU.
Mrs. Hourani and her husband Amal have since 1993
contributed generously to various endeavors at LAU. The
inspiration for their present donation came when they recently
reflected on the predicament of prospective students interested
in studying at LAU but unable to afford it.
Mrs. Hourani, who is of Palestinian descent, seized the
opportunity to pay homage to her roots as well as give back
to her alma mater by offering other Palestinian students the
possibility of an LAU education.
“It is important to give, so those less fortunate have the
chance of a better life,” she says. “We chose to provide aid
to nursing and pharmacy students because they will be of
invaluable service in the ever-demanding health care sector.
These are professions that heal people,” she added.
At the signing ceremony President Jabbra praised the
Houranis’ generosity and related it to LAU’s mission. “We feel
strongly about giving everyone the chance to receive a higher
education. This is the essence of LAU.”
The Houranis’ substantial donations to LAU over the years
have gone toward naming the Rima Hourani Exhibition Room
on the Byblos campus in 1993 and the Amal Issa Hourani
Lounge at the School of Business on the Beirut campus in
2008.
Besides contributing to education in Lebanon, Mr. Hourani
has assisted in the rapid economic development of the Emirates
over the past four decades through ALGECO, the prosperous
UAE-based contracting company he co-founded in 1963.
Mr. Hourani also sits on the advisory boards of LAU’s schools
of Engineering and Business.
Hala and Mohammad Finj
“Helping others from afar”
Ahmad’s mother describes him as “our inspiration to be
patient, to love, and to always give.” Before naming a bench
and endowed scholarship fund after him, Mrs. Finj published
a book about his life, proceeds from which helped people with
cases like his.
The bench is in the upper gate area of the Beirut campus,
where Ahmad liked to relax and socialize with friends.
“Ahmad’s name shall live at a place so dear to his heart,” Mrs.
Finj concludes.
page 23
& alumni bulletin
Hala and Mohammad Finj are establishing an Endowed
Scholarship Fund in the name of their late son Ahmad, an
LAU alumnus, as well as naming a bench after him on the
Beirut campus. Ahmad suffered most of his life from a rare and
debilitating bone disease, and passed away in 2006.
Ahmad forged close friendships at LAU and continues to
be remembered with affection. Mohammad Finj described his
son’s university years as the happiest of his life, and expressed
gratitude for the steps LAU took to facilitate his studies.
The administration rescheduled room assignments to
make Ahmad’s classes more easily reachable, provided him
with a writing assistant for lectures and exams, and even built
a wheelchair ramp on the Beirut campus. Such measures
“demonstrated that disabled people can fully succeed
academically,” Mrs. Finj says.
Ahmad is remembered as a bright student, a great listener
and a witty companion. The Finjs never felt they had a sick
son, they both say, because Ahmad knew how to live his life to
the fullest.
A dedicated student, Ahmad insisted on attending classes
even in the face of mounting medical complications. He also
enjoyed working at his father’s company, and wanted eventually
to open his own business.
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
By LAU Staff
Campus Notes
s
e
T
o
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Campus
Shaping Leaders
For more details about these LAU activities,
visit the news section of www.lau.edu.lb.
New grant for Tomorrow’s Leaders program
the tomorrow’s leaders (tl) scholarship program at lau received a $2.4-million grant
from the u.S. government’s middle east Partnership initiative (mePi) in September.
Starting in 2011–2012, the grant will finance the expenses for 18 students (enrolled
in four-year bachelor’s degree programs at lau) with leadership potential from Saudi
arabia, algeria and potentially iraq. lau’s university enterprise Office, charged with
overseeing the program, won its first mePi tl grant three years ago and welcomed its
first six students from various arab countries in fall 2008. Sixteen additional students
joined in 2009, and 15 more this year.
Global Model UN conference participation
Over 1,000 university students from countries where model un programs are
organized, including seven from lau, were chosen to participate in the second
annual Global model united nations Conference (Gmun), which was organized by
the un Department of Public information and was held in Kuala lumpur, malaysia,
from august 14–18. Role-playing as foreign diplomats, they simulated un General
assembly sessions, under the theme “towards an alliance of Civilizations: bridging
Cultures to achieve Peace and Development.” the lau delegation (the only lebanese
group) included Khaled Kabbara, who served as Gmun’s under-secretary-general for
General assembly affairs and Conference management — one of just five secretariat
positions — after having been selected among hundreds of applicants from around
the world.
Conflict-prevention training
the Summer School for emerging leaders in Conflict Prevention and transformation
gave the opportunity to 20 young arabs from different backgrounds to come
together for an intensive program on peace building, august 2–11. it included a
series of activities that instilled the values of cooperation, trust and tolerance in
the participants, who also resided together in the lau byblos dorms. the summer
school was organized for a sixth consecutive year by lau’s institute for Peace and
Justice education, with the support of the mennonite Central Committee lebanon
and Consensus, a negotiation and conflict-resolution consulting private firm based
in new York.
Community Outreach and Civic Engagement
Environment clean-up campaigns
about a dozen lau students, mostly from the university’s uneSCO Club, helped clean
up Ramlet al-baida, just one of the 88 locations that were swept by thousands who
participated in a campaign to clean lebanese shores, may 16. Dubbed “Operation
big blue,” the annual event was held under the patronage of the lebanese President,
Prime minister, and the ministry of Youth and Sports, in collaboration with the
lebanese Scouts association and the nGO Cedars for Care.
in a separate event, 10 lau students cleaned up a small forest in the village of Deddeh
in el-Koura, north lebanon, October 10. they filmed the campaign, which was held as
part of the “One Day on earth,”a global media project supported by the united nations
and several non-profits, in which thousands of students, documentary filmmakers, and
inspired citizens from over 190 countries across the world participated, documenting
their experiences on 10/10/10. Organized by the newly established Outreach and Civic
engagement unit at lau, the event was designed to shed light on climate change and
global warming, and to promote a culture of activism among lebanese youths.
page 24
Standing up for Millennium Development Goals
On September 17, lau and the un information Center (uniC) in beirut organized
an event under the motto “Stand up, take action and make noise for the
millennium Development Goals (mDGs),” to galvanize lebanese youth and civil
society into action for the implementation of the eight mDGs in the country by the
2015 deadline. During the event held at the un House in beirut, lau and lebanese
high school students participating in the lau model un program, together
with representatives of nGOs, took an oath to raise awareness on the mDGs.
a proclamation containing a set of recommendations on the implementation of
the mDGs in lebanon was handed over by students to the representatives of the
lebanese executive and legislative authorities and to the uniC representative, who
later delivered a copy to un Secretary-General ban Ki-moon.
Visiting Lecturers
Shedding light on body language
imad mekahal, a body-language consultant to various public figures, gave a
presentation titled “the essentials of body language,” at lau beirut’s irwin Hall
auditorium, June 4. through an interactive discussion with around 150 audience
members, made up mostly of lau alumni, mekahal offered tips on improving work
and social exchanges. the event was organized by the alumni Relations Office.
Interdisciplinarity in gender studies
& alumni bulletin
Arts, Culture and Language
Intensive Arabic language and
culture program
a record number of 164 participants joined
lau’s Summer institute for intensive arabic
and Culture June 28–august 6 — over
50 more than last summer. the program
included six weeks of courses (standard
arabic and lebanese dialect for four different
levels), in addition to weekly trips, guest
lectures, and social activities aimed to
familiarize participants with the local culture.
the program will expand to offer spring
courses for the first time next year, besides
the summer and fall sessions.
page 25
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
Dr. martina Rieker, director of the institute for Gender and Women’s Studies at
the american university of Cairo, gave a lecture titled “interdisciplinarity and the
emergent Field of Gender and Women’s Studies in the middle east/north africa
Region” on may 20, at lau beirut. the event was organized by lau’s institute for
Women’s Studies in the arab World.
Campus Notes
Arts, Culture and Language
International university theater festival
around 200 young thespians from the middle east and europe presented diverse
performances during the 13th lau international university theatre Festival, held on
the beirut campus, July 22–28. Organized by lau’s Department of Communication
arts, the event featured over 20 theater productions, in addition to concerts, workshops,
installations and discussions. Participants came from belgium, the netherlands,
morocco, tunisia, egypt, Kuwait, Syria and lebanon.
Interactive dance performance
I Matter, a dance production written, choreographed and directed by Dr. nadra assaf,
lecturer of english and dance at lau, was performed throughout may at monnot
theater by assaf’s al-Sarab Dance troupe. the interactive theatrical dance relied
on the audience to play central roles in the progression of the dance, based on the
concept that anyone, at any moment in time, matters and makes a difference in
the big picture sense. the project’s first round consisted of nine performances with
347 attendees. the second round, which was sponsored by lau’s School of arts and
Sciences in byblos, consisted of six performances gathering 187 attendees.
Architecture and Design
Italian architect Aldo Rossi in the spotlight
the concepts of the late italian architect aldo Rossi were re-examined within the
context of lebanon’s rapid urbanization, during a symposium organized by lau’s
School of architecture and Design, October 21 at lau beirut. the symposium, which
featured several renowned experts from europe and north america who presented
on Rossi’s life and work, was followed by an exhibition of Rossi’s drawings. the
event marked the release of an arabic translation of Rossi’s 1984 book, A Scientific
Autobiography, by Dr. elie Haddad, assistant dean of the school and associate
professor of architecture.
Graphic design student exhibits
the annual end-of-year graphic design exhibitions on both campuses brought
together dozens of graduating students who showcased their final-year print and
digital-media projects, in may and June. it was the first end-of-year exhibit organized
by lau’s School of architecture and Design, which opened its doors in fall 2009.
in byblos, the exhibit was called “echo10” and challenged students to consider the
impact of their work on culture and society. the beirut
event was themed “Propel”: it was about the progression
and evolution of the times, particularly signified at lau
by the establishment of the School of architecture and
Design. like each year, projects on both campuses were
judged in a single competition for best design.
page 26
Science, Technology and Engineering
Computer programming contest
nineteen teams of computer science students from 11 universities throughout
lebanon competed in the second annual lebanese Collegiate Programming Contest
(lCPC), held at lau beirut, June 25–26. For the second year in a row, the event was
organized by lau beirut’s Computer Science and mathematics Department. lCPC
is a local chapter of the regional arab Collegiate Programming Contest, itself is a
regional chapter of the international Collegiate Programming Contest. (See story on
page 47.)
Engineering internships in Dubai
Six lau civil engineering students completed an intensive internship program in Dubai
in may and June, working alongside six peers from new York’s Syracuse university.
Working in teams, the students visited construction sites and learned about contracting
from professionals with the Dubai Contracting Company, which began sponsoring the
annual program last year. the students also attended a series of lectures, and prepared
presentations and reports.
Computer science students present final projects
On may 24, 17 computer science students presented their eight final-year group
projects at lau beirut’s academic Computer Center, as part of the annual capstone
project competition. the winning project was a business intelligence portal that allows
businesses to streamline day-to-day operations by automating data-analysis processes.
Representatives from the computer science industry were also invited to the event,
where they had the opportunity to meet students and scout for potential recruits. the
winners were announced during a gathering on may 26.
Business News
& alumni bulletin
On October 4, lau signed three letters of intent with a three-member Qatari
delegation, representing construction giant al Jaber Group, that included plans to
offer an lau executive master of business administration (e.m.b.a.) degree in the
Gulf country, an executive-training program that could lead to an e.m.b.a., and a
massive program to train teachers and principals at over 130 independent Qatari
schools. the launch of the three programs, which is being overseen by lau’s
university enterprise Office, is expected to take place in early 2011. lau’s School of
business, School of arts and Sciences, and teacher training institute will be involved
in the implementation of the programs.
PR forum
tRaCCS, a regional PR network, in collaboration with the institute for media training
and Research at lau, organized the second beirut Public Relations Forum that
explored strategic issues in the region’s PR industry through a series of presentations,
panel discussions, and workshops. themed “brilliance,” the event was held under
the patronage of lebanon’s minister of information, Dr. tarek mitri, July 7–8 at the
Gefinor Rotana Hotel in beirut.
page 27
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
LAU in Qatar: Training and educational programs
Campus Notes
Business News
Seminar on multi-generational family businesses
business owners and entrepreneurs gathered at lau byblos June 19 for a seminar
titled “Success of multi-Generational Family business,” which was given by Dr. Joseph
astrachan, executive director of Cox Family enterprise Center at Kennesaw State
university in Georgia, uSa. Organized by lau’s institute of Family and entrepreneurial
business, the event shed light on the myths surrounding family business and the keys
to effective succession. e.m.b.a. students from Kennesaw State university who were
visiting lebanon were also present.
Donors Give Back
Lebanese banks offer scholarships
two lebanese banks affirmed their commitment to offer scholarships to lau
students, during two meetings held at the university in October. Jammal trust
bank (Jtb) will offer one business student a full scholarship (the ali abdullah
Jammal memorial Scholarship, named after ali Jammal, Jtb’s founding chairman)
throughout her years at lau. byblos bank will sponsor 50 percent of the 2010–2011
tuition of five business and two engineering students, through the byblos bank
annual Scholarship Grant.
Donation contributes to Byblos cafeteria renovation
the inauguration of the renovated byblos-campus cafeteria was held October 6.
Former minister H.e. Dr. leila Solh Hamade, vice president of the alwaleed bin talal
Humanitarian Foundation that financed the summer-long renovations through
a donation of about $300,000, was present to cut the ceremonial ribbon. the
dining hall was equipped with a cybercafé, large lCD televisions, new furniture,
and a modern layout, among other upgrades that were all overseen by the Human
Resources and university Services.
Naming LAU seats and benches
lau’s Development Office publicly launched the Seat and bench naming
Campaign, with a ceremony held at the beirut campus, July 8. the campaign
offers lau alumni, faculty and staff the opportunity of naming a seat in irwin Hall
auditorium (beirut) or Selina Korban auditorium (byblos) for a $500 donation,
or a bench on either campus for $5,000. the initiative, which is a part of the
university’s Campaign for excellence: the legacy and the Promise, had started
with a silent phase at the end of 2009, when a select number of potential donors
were contacted. at the ceremony, certificates were granted to those who have
contributed to the campaign so far.
Entertainment
FIFA World Cup fiesta
Hundreds of families gathered at lau beirut over the June 19–20 weekend for the
second annual lau Fiesta, featuring games and entertainment for all ages. Organized
by lau students and the beirut alumni Chapter, this year’s event was themed “FiFa
World Cup.”
page 28
Moving On
Tarek Na’was
A revered dean of students changes hats
by lau Staff
& alumni bulletin
“He ensured that students’ rights were maintained and their
voices heard. they in turn flocked to his office for counsel. When he
walks through the beirut campus, he is walking amongst friends.”
in his public announcement regarding the reassignment,
President Joseph G. Jabbra asked the lau community to join him
in “thanking Dr. tarek na’was for his excellent years of service as
Dean of Students, and congratulating him as he prepares to assume
his new responsibilities.”
page 29
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
Dr. tarek na’was, associate professor of biology and pharmacy at
lau, relinquished his position as Dean of Students on the beirut
campus in October 2010. in addition to his teaching duties, na’was
now serves as lau’s official representative at the association of
lebanese universities; as liaison with and ombudsman for lau’s
international students; and as advisor-in-residence to the pre-med,
pre-pharmacy, and pre-nursing students on the beirut campus,
working closely with the deans of medicine, Pharmacy, and nursing.
na’was’ tenure as Dean of Students was a fruitful one, and his
work in that role was widely admired. Student services such as
advising, career placement, and counseling took root, and he oversaw
a huge expansion of varsity intramural athletics and extracurricular
activities at lau. na’was is passionate about sports and a devoted
fan of lau’s teams, attending their home and away games on a
regular basis. He brought that same generosity and school spirit to
the many campus programs he helped to facilitate, including Spring
Fiesta, international Heritage Day, and various awareness campaigns,
blood drives and charitable initiatives.
na’was organized and led numerous ceremonies, receptions and
programs honoring lau students. He has also welcomed dozens of
delegations from foreign embassies, represented lau to universities
and other organizations around the world, and coordinated student
orientations and annual commencements. in his capacity as Dean of
Students, he also supervised the offices of the Registrar, admissions
and Financial aid, helping lau develop a professional enrollment
management team.
Dr. elise Salem, vice president for Student Development and
enrollment management at lau, recalled na’was in his previous
position as “the ultimate advocate for students.”
Brick and Mortar
Frem Civic Center
Brick and Mortar
Laying the foundations of a vision
By LAU Staff
From their inception, the Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury
School of Medicine and the Alice Ramez Chagoury School of
Nursing were envisioned by LAU as pioneering. The medical
school is designed to educate a “new physician,” one both
trained in state-of-the-art skills and invested in the role of
compassionate healer. The integrated curriculum, with its
reliance on small group, self-directed, problem-based learning,
is designed to develop the depth of character and insight
into human nature required of doctors in the 21st century.
The schools of Medicine and Nursing are integrated to an
unprecedented degree, with future physicians and nurses
training alongside one another, their interactions modeled on
those of their professional counterparts in a hospital setting.
Realizing this vision requires more than an excellent
curriculum and an outstanding faculty; it requires exceptional
facilities as well. The School of Medicine and Nursing building
nearing completion on LAU’s Byblos campus is visionary in its
own right. Flanked by a new library and the recently inaugurated
Frem Civic Center, it is a six-story state-of-the-art educational
structure, designed to motivate students, support collaborative
learning as well as formal practice, and provide an environment
responsive to the dynamic needs of progressive health care
education.
page 30
Creating space around people rather than technology was
the guiding design principle. Human needs like comfort, natural
light, social ambiance, and window views took precedence
over mere utilitarian function. At the same time, the building
features world-class facilities and technologies, ranging from
videoconferencing to simulation labs to digitized collections of
microscope slides.
The Entrance Hall welcomes visitors with a four-story
skylight. A large plasma screen overlooking the entrance informs
students of key events in the faculty calendar or activities for the
day. The ground floor comprises spaces designed to facilitate
collaboration between faculty and students, as well as 24-hour
cyber café.
The design team drew upon a range of architectural
influences, recalls George Hamouche, assistant vice president
for Facilities Management at LAU. Partners Harvard Medical
International (PHMI) provided a tour of medical school
campuses in New England, including Harvard, Northeastern,
and UMass Boston.
“They returned with design ideas related to these new ways
of teaching medicine, and with the help of HMI conceived the
space, its distribution over the floors, where the labs would go.
It was a synthesis,” Hamouche explains.
& alumni bulletin
“We aim to be a leader in interdisciplinary
education and this building will help us achieve
that goal.”
—Nancy Hoffart, founding dean, School of Nursing, LAU
Classrooms, laboratories and clinical areas throughout the
building will be used jointly by students from the School of
nursing and the School of medicine. Dr. nancy Hoffart, founding
dean of lau’s School of nursing, says that interdisciplinary
education is a “must” in today’s health care environment.
“the design of this building will facilitate faculty efforts
to bring together not only nursing and medical students, but
in many situations also pharmacy, nutrition, and social work
students,” Hoffart explains.
“We aim to be a leader in interdisciplinary education and
this building will help us achieve that goal.”
page 31
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
the first floor includes simulation laboratories designed to
represent various clinical settings, from patient interviews to
sophisticated treatment areas. the second floor will house the
Case method Rooms, electronically advanced amphitheaters
with individual “voting” systems creating an interactive lecture
environment. Floors three and four will include “smart”
laboratories for both student and faculty research.
New Appointments
New Appointments
Lynn Eckhert
Dr. Lynn Eckhert took on the post of interim dean of the Gilbert and Rose-Marie
Chagoury School of Medicine in October. Eckhert had been a key player in the
development of the medical school in the years leading up to its establishment,
through her membership in Partners Harvard Medical International.
Before joining LAU, Eckhert enjoyed a distinguished career in pediatrics as well
as serving as professor of family medicine and community health, professor in the
Graduate School of Nursing and adjunct professor in public health at the University
of Massachusetts Medical School, and senior lecturer in population health at Harvard
Medical School.
She holds a Master of Nursing from the New York Medical College Graduate School
of Nursing, a Doctor of Medicine from State University of New York at Buffalo School
of Medicine, and a Master and Doctorate of Public Health, both from Johns Hopkins
School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Following several years of postdoctoral training, Eckhert began an academic career
in 1976 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where she held several
teaching and administrative positions, including associate professor of pediatrics,
assistant dean for admissions, chair of the Family and Community Medicine
Department, and professor of family and community medicine.
Eckhert’s position at LAU is hardly her first outside the United States. Her interest
in international health began during her first international rotation as a medical
student in Liberia. Since then, Eckhert has held visiting professorships in China, the
United Kingdom, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Hungary, South Korea and Japan. She also
taught at LAU for two months in 2009.
Pierre Zalloua
Dr. Pierre Zalloua became interim dean of LAU’s School of Pharmacy in October,
three years after joining the university, where he has been serving as associate
professor and assistant dean for research at the Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury
School of Medicine.
Zalloua is an internationally recognized geneticist specializing in complex
diseases with particular relevance to Middle Eastern populations. Even with the
new administrative duties that go along with his new post, Zalloua says he remains
dedicated to his research.
In 2010, Zalloua won a $1 million grant from the Qatar National Research Fund
to assemble a team and research Type II Diabetes, a rapidly spreading disease in the
Middle East. He received international attention in 2009 after discovering a genetic
signature unique to the ancient Phoenician civilization.
Zalloua has made considerable progress in identifying susceptibility gene variants
for Type I Diabetes and coronary artery disease in the last few years, as part of an
ongoing research project to study complex diseases and their interactions with the
environment. He was also the principal investigator for the FGENTCARD Project, a
European Union research project from 2007 to 2009.
Zalloua holds a bachelor’s in biology from the American University of Beirut, a
master’s in biological sciences from San Jose State University, and a doctorate in
genetics from the University of California, Davis.
After several years of postgraduate fellowships in genetics, molecular biology and
population genetics at UC Davis, Applied Biosystems, and the Harvard School of
Public Health, respectively, Zalloua served as an assistant professor, then associate
professor, at AUB’s school of medicine between 2003 and 2007.
page 32
Raed Mohsen
Dr. Raed Mohsen was appointed Dean of Students at LAU Beirut effective October 1.
He has been part of the LAU community since 1996, when he joined as a faculty
member in the Department of Communication Arts.
A specialist in human communication, Mohsen serves on the Board of Directors
of the Learning Center for the Deaf, and is a co-founder and honorary member of the
Lebanese Association for Mediation and Conciliation.
Mohsen received a bachelor’s in interpersonal and public communication in 1983,
a master’s in political science (public administration) in 1984, and a doctorate in
interpersonal and public communication in 1987 from Bowling Green State University
in Ohio. In 1996, he earned a Master of Social Work from Gallaudet University in
Washington, D.C. He later taught for seven years in Gallaudet’s Department of
Communication Arts.
Mohsen said he is dedicated to serving students by “enhancing student life,
contributing to the college experience, protecting their rights, and ensuring they
receive the services that are expected of a leading institution of higher education.”
Mohsen served as chair of the Department of Communication Arts from 2006
to 2009, prior to his appointment as Dean of Students. He was also a faculty
representative for six terms.
Outside the university, Mohsen has practiced social work in his private clinic,
counseling adolescents, couples and families. He has also hosted a tri-weekly morning
television segment addressing social, marital and family issues. In addition, he has
headed workshops and training seminars on topics of conflict management and
resolution, team-building, presentation skills and parenting skills.
Elie Samia
Elie Samia was recently appointed executive director of the newly established office
for Outreach and Civic Engagement. Samia, who is also a lecturer in political science
and sociology, first joined LAU in 1991.
He holds a master’s in political science with an emphasis in political development,
and a bachelor’s in political science, both from the American University in Cairo. He
became a faculty adviser for the Harvard World Model United Nations in 2002.
Three years later, Samia was appointed director of guidance at LAU Byblos. Also in
2005, he became director of the Global Classrooms – LAU’s Model United Nations.
Samia writes and lectures about leadership and negotiation skills as well as political
and constitutional reforms in Lebanon. He aspires to engage the largest number of
LAU students in leadership outreach programs and voluntary civic action.
page 33
& alumni bulletin
Christian Oussi has recently been promoted to executive director of public and media
relations. He joined LAU in 2006 after being appointed as director of that office.
Oussi, a veteran journalist, is a well-known figure inside Lebanese media circles. He
started his career in 1980 as a reporter at Voice of Lebanon radio station and Al Anwar
newspaper, before taking on more prominent positions in the field. His clout in the
industry has helped attract a strong media focus on LAU in the press.
He graduated from Lebanese University in 1981 with bachelor’s degrees in
journalism and in political studies. He later earned a master’s in political science, and
is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program in political science at Aix-Marseille University
in France.
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
Christian Oussi
New Faculty Recruits
Welcoming Faculty
Jenine Abboushi
Dr. Jenine Abboushi became an assistant professor at LAU’s Department of Humanities in
2010, teaching a graduate seminar on methodologies in comparative literature, sophomore
rhetoric, and the 19th-century British novel. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from
Harvard University. She says she joined LAU because it is “changing and developing rapidly,” and
because creative thinking and initiatives are valued. She also took as a good sign the support of
a vibrant theater culture at LAU.
Thamara Abouantoun
Dr. Thamara Abouantoun is a fresh face to LAU, where she teaches medical anatomy, and
physiology and pathophysiology. She is a trained molecular oncologist investigating cancer stem
cell therapy in childhood tumors, and is currently working on publishing her manuscripts with her
former mentor at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She says she came
to LAU to be part of a “prospering institution” with the hope of establishing a cancer research
studies program. She holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from George Washington University.
Asterios Agkathidis
Asterios Agkathidis is currently a visiting professor at LAU’s School of Architecture and Design,
where he teaches Design III and Design V. He studied architecture at the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki in Greece, the RWTH (Aachen, Germany) and the Städelschule (Frankfurt, Germany).
His research focuses on systematic design methods and emerging technologies. He is the editor
and author of four books, which are being distributed internationally. Agkathidis is currently
working on his fifth book, a chair collection, which will include teaching and research activities
from LAU and some architectural projects in Greece and Germany.
Guy Assaker
Dr. Guy Assaker joined LAU in 2010 as an assistant professor at the School of Business. He holds
a Ph.D. in Decision Science from ESSEC Business School, a master’s in international tourism
strategy from University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, and an M.B.A. from Cornell University. He
says he joined LAU because of its excellent reputation and commitment to research. He currently
teaches research and quantitative methods for business, as well as tourism subjects. Outside
LAU, he serves as a consultant with Salina Hotel Consultant.
Nada El-Khoury Assouad
Dr. Nada El-Khoury Assouad joined LAU’s School of Architecture and Design in 2010 where
she teaches environmental and sustainable design. She earned a Ph.D. from the Faculty of
Environmental Design at the University of Montreal in 2008. She says she was motivated to
join LAU because of its multidisciplinary approach to teaching and liberal attitude toward
multiculturalism. She has maintained close ties and is currently contributing to projects with the
University of Montreal.
Reine Azzi
Reine Azzi took on a full-time faculty position at the School of Arts and Sciences in 2010 where
she teaches courses in English, rhetoric and moral reasoning. She had previously been teaching
at LAU part-time since 2007. Originally from Lebanon, she has done graduate work in France, Italy
and Scotland before moving back. She describes her interest in “fostering the spirit of community
engagement” among her students, and has previously taken them on field trips to orphanages,
health care centers, and the Lebanese Red Cross.
Maria Bahous
Maria Bahous has been teaching graphic design courses at LAU since 2007, but only recently
became a full-time faculty member. An LAU graduate, Bahous says she believes the Graphic
Design Department has set a program and philosophy that meet the interests of the students
while continuously striving to improve. She earned her M.A. in Typography and Information
Design at the London College of Communication in 2006, the same year she established a design
studio in Beirut.
page 34
Yasmine Dabbous
Dr. Yasmine Dabbous recently joined LAU as an assistant professor of journalism and media
studies. She is the director of The Institute for Media Training and Research at LAU. She holds a
B.A. in Journalism from LAU, an M.S. in Communication Studies from Boston University, and a
Ph.D. in Mass Communication and Public Affairs from Louisiana State University. Dabbous is also
part of a three-member research team conducting a survey of media in Lebanon for the Open
Society Foundation in Europe.
Deema Dakakni
Deema Dakakni recently took on a full-time teaching position at LAU, where she teaches
English courses at variable levels, starting with Intensive III, all the way up to Remedial, English
I, English II and Oral Communication Skills. She says her motivations to join LAU are based on
its “eternal striving for excellence in education and lifelong learning.” Dakakni earned an M.A.
from LAU in 2009. She says she looks forward to being involved in conferences and academic
projects at LAU.
Marina Dodigovic
Dr. Marina Dodigovic joined LAU’s School of Arts and Sciences in October 2010 where she
teaches English courses. An Australian national, Dodigovic has spent the past several years
teaching in the Middle East. Prior to joining LAU, Dodigovic taught at Weill Cornell Medical
College in Qatar from 2007–2010, at the American University of Sharjah in the UAE from
2004–2007, and Zayed University in Dubai from 2002–2004. Her research interests include the
use of computers in second-language acquisition and teaching. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics
from the University of Bremen in Germany.
Raed El-Khalil
Dr. Raed El-Khalil is a visiting professor at LAU’s School of Engineering, where he teaches project
scheduling and lean manufacturing. El-Khalil received a Ph.D. in Manufacturing Engineering
from Lawrence Technological University in 2008. In addition to his work at LAU, he works for
Chrysler LLC in Michigan as a consultant in advanced manufacturing engineering. His current
projects at Chrysler include improving body shop manufacturing and assembly processing at
the Warren Truck assembly plant, and work on robot design and efficiency improvement at the
Sterling Heights assembly plant.
Elie Harfouche
Elie Harfouche recently began teaching full-time at LAU’s School of Architecture and Design.
He had previously been a part-time instructor there since 2007. Harfouche received an M.Sc.
in Architectural History and Theory from University College London in 2006 and a Diploma in
Higher Studies in Architecture from the University of Balamand in 2000. Harfouche is currently
organizing exhibitions and talks about the LAU architecture and design program’s unique
International Studio program. Outside LAU, Harfouche is involved in small interior design and
architecture projects on a very selective basis while serving as the editor-in-chief of an upcoming
online venture called Archileb: The Lebanese Architecture Portal.
page 35
& alumni bulletin
Behnam Farahpour has been a visiting associate professor of Design Foundation at LAU’s School
of Architecture and Design since February 2010. Farahpour earned a Master of Architecture
in 2009 from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Fine Art from Carnegie
Mellon University. He says he decided to join LAU since it offered the opportunity to teach
design studio concurrent with his design research. He also wanted to gain exposure to Lebanese
culture. Outside LAU, Farahpour is working on several design projects with his partner at their
design firm, RefinedGrit, while he prepares a few abstracts for conferences in the United States
and Europe.
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
Behnam Farahpour
New Faculty Recruits
Adoni Maalouf
Adoni Maalouf recently took on a full-time position at LAU’s Department of Communication
Arts, where he teaches radio production, introduction to the art of theater and to acting, and
play production. An LAU graduate, Maalouf says he decided to leave his part-time teaching
positions at the American University of Beirut and Notre Dame University in order “to give
back” to his alma mater. He holds an M.A. in Advanced Theater Practice from the Central School
of Speech and Drama in the United Kingdom. Aside from theater, acting and film, Maalouf’s
interests include adventurous sports like rock climbing, mountaineering, scuba diving, and
paragliding.
Bassem Maamari
Dr. Bassem Maamari had been teaching part-time at LAU’s School of Business since 1998 until
taking on a full-time position in October 2010. He received a bachelor’s in business accounting
in 1988, and a master’s in business management in 1992, both from LAU. He recently finished a
doctorate in Grenoble, France. Maamari held several managerial positions over the past 18 years
before deciding to commit to LAU full-time since it “presents a dynamic educational experience
in an ever-evolving environment”.
Wassilia Makarem
Wassilia Makarem recently became a full-time faculty member at LAU having served part-time
in the Department of Humanities since 2008 where she teaches English courses. She received
her master’s, bachelor’s and teaching diploma all from the American University of Beirut (AUB).
Prior to joining LAU, Makarem taught English at AUB. She says she joined LAU for its “educational
profile, its friendly ambiance, its meritocracy and its relaxing atmosphere.” Her interests include
literature, music and photography.
Nadim Mohsen
Nadim Mohsen recently became a full-time faculty member at the School of Arts and Sciences,
where he teaches courses in cultural studies, and introduction to philosophy and to political
science. He had previously been teaching part-time at LAU since 2003. He says LAU has allowed
him to make a career out of what he loves and describes the university as “an ideal environment
to optimize growth and research for personal and professional development, while feeling useful
to an entire generation of young people, and hopefully, the community at large.” He holds a
D.E.A. in Political Sociology and a Master in Social Development from the Lebanese University,
and a B.S. in Economics from the University of Michigan. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in
Political Sociology from the Lebanese University.
Elsy Ramia
Dr. Elsy Ramia joined LAU’s School of Pharmacy over the summer of 2010 after having earned
her Pharm.D. degree from the university in 2009. In summer 2009, she started working as a
clinical pharmacist at Centre Hospitalier du Nord (CHN) – Zgharta, where she participated in
establishing and implementing drug utilization protocols. She also participated in preparing
several continuing education programs for nurses and pharmacy technicians, and in implementing
JCAHO requirements in the hospital pharmacy.
Hanibal Srouji
Hanibal Srouji recently joined LAU as an assistant professor at the School of Architecture and
Design, where he teaches courses in foundation. He had previously been a lecturer in design
at Sorbonne University in Paris from 2006–2009. He received both a Bachelor and Master of
Fine Arts in Painting from Concordia University in Montreal. He left Lebanon at a very young
age in 1976, and says teaching at LAU allowed him to fulfil his dream – held dear throughout
his years in Canada and France – of returning to his native country to share his knowledge
and experiences.
page 36
LAU Faculty Profile
Aline Saad
Bringing compassion to the field of pharmacy
By Emily Morris
Dr. Aline Saad is a clinical assistant professor and chair of LAU’s
Department of Pharmacy Practice. She joined the university in
2007, after returning to Lebanon from the United States, where
she completed both her Pharm.D. degree and her residency in
Michigan.
In addition to teaching courses and pursuing research, Saad
has been working hard to give more weight to the service-learning
component of the curriculum. Service-learning is built on the idea
that pharmacists and other health practitioners must be as socially
compassionate as they are clinically competent, and that interaction
with the community is vital in fostering communication skills and
a philosophy of social responsibility. Saad serves as the president of
the No Apathy Pharmacy Awareness Student Society (NAPHASS),
which aims to cultivate leadership in pharmacy students and reach
out to the community through health awareness campaigns.
“We are trying to show our students that pharmacy is more
than just filling prescriptions,” Saad said. “We must understand the
socioeconomic context our patients inhabit, in order best to serve
them.”
LAU Magazine recently caught up with Saad to talk about the
pharmacy profession and how it is evolving.
Q&A
What accomplishment, either personal or professional, means
the most to you? My most significant personal accomplishment
is motherhood. I am a proud mother of three boys: Habib, 9,
and 4-year-old twin boys — Omar and Kamal. I pray to be able
to help them achieve their potential as individuals, to care for
What are some of the challenges facing pharmacists in their physical and emotional needs and to love them beyond
Lebanon? There are three main challenges here. The first is imagination.
to implement clinical pharmacy, a more holistic approach.
It is standard practice in the U.S., and the Order of Pharmacy
in Lebanon is trying to make it a requirement for hospitals to
have clinical pharmacists. Secondly, we have counterfeit drugs, a
problem we as pharmacists can’t fix alone. The third problem is
patient access to medication, since health equity is not anywhere
close to 100 percent in any part of the world.
What can a pharmacy student expect these days upon
graduation? It’s a growing, very promising career. There are many
tracks that a student can choose as far as career development.
A student can go on for postgraduate education, and many of
our students do get accepted into Ph.D. programs, fellowships or
residency programs. Those who decide to work right away have
many opportunities as well, whether in Lebanon, elsewhere in
the Middle East, or in the U.S., since we’re accredited by the ACPE
(Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education). Our students
are probably the most sought-after, and once they apply, they
usually get accepted before students from other universities.
Why? Because we train them very well and they have an excellent
reputation.
Aline Saad during a NAPHASS visit to the SOS Children’s Village
in Kfarhay, North Lebanon
page 37
& alumni bulletin
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
What made you decide to become a pharmacist? I chose
pharmacy because it is a dynamic field where discoveries of new
medicines are happening every day, with the possibility of cures
for diseases.
The Legacy & the Promise Campaign
THE LEGACY & THE PROMISE CAMPAIGN
LAU on Capitol Hill
by Greg Houle
Regular visits to the center of america’s political establishment
are invaluable in making the case for supporting lau’s mission
and goals for the future. Washington’s value to the university
— indeed its value to the cause of american higher education
worldwide — is incalculable.
Vice President for university advancement Richard Rumsey
and lau Government Relations consultant Graeme bannerman
lead the university’s efforts in the u.S. capital. Rumsey travels
to Washington on a bimonthly basis, and bannerman is based
there and in regular contact with government officials on the
university’s behalf. they are joined at least twice a year by lau
President Joseph G. Jabbra, when the team spends a hectic
few days in Capitol Hill racing through the cavernous Rayburn
and longworth buildings, which house the offices of u.S.
congressmen. typically they meet with members of Congress
and their staff, sometimes to thank representatives and senators
for supporting funding initiatives, or signing letters of support
(such as the one sent to u.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
in 2009, which advocated for the funding of vital scholarship
programs at american educational institutions in the middle
east), sometimes to meet newly elected officials and others not
yet familiar with the role of institutions like lau in providing
the region with quality higher education on the american
model.
“if you want to project american values, you do it through
education,” said former Congressman William D. Delahunt in a
meeting with lau officials during the summer of 2009, when
page 38
he was representative for the state of massachusetts. though
a familiar refrain from Washington’s political establishment,
this isn’t something that lau or any other american university
abroad can take for granted. they must work to keep elected
officials and others informed of the value lau provides, not
only by educating the people of lebanon and the middle east
but by improving the regional image of the united States.
lau’s D.C. delegation also works to build and maintain
valuable relationships with individuals from various agencies,
lobbies, and advocacy groups based in the capital. these
relationships provide lau with visibility, and help pave the way
for grant and scholarship opportunities. three years ago, at a
board of trustees meeting in Washington, then-u.S. Secretary
of education margaret Spellings praised lau for demonstrating
the “transformative role that higher-education institutions can
play in bringing students of diverse cultures together in the
common cause of seeking truth and knowledge.” thanks in
large part to the lau team’s work, support for the university
and its mission is strong in Washington, a fact resoundingly
confirmed this last autumn by the uSaiD grant of more than
$6.9 million.
Our work in Washington is never finished. On march 24–25
the university will hold its board of trustees meeting in the city,
and in mid-april Dr. Jabbra and other lau officials will head
once again to Capitol Hill for more high-level meetings.
Cherish a loved one.
GOAL $65 Million
Honor a dear companion.
LAU’s «Take a Bench or Seat, Leave a Legacy»
campaign offers the chance of a lifetime
to show you care.
Over 100 alumni, faculty and staff members have
already named seats and benches on the Beirut and
Byblos campuses with their generous $500 and $5,000
contributions.
To become a part of this endeavor, visit our website at
http://seat-bench.lau.edu.lb, or call the Beirut Development Office
at 01-786456/64 ext. 1323.
page 39
& alumni bulletin
Leave an imprint
that will last forever.
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
RAISED $56,650,895
F E AT U R E S
Up in Smoke
The high cost
of a national vice
page 40
By Emily Morris
T
Laboratory Medicine, AUB
Since April 2009, a draft law in the Lebanese Parliament
has been tabled for discussion and faces continual delays. The
draft has three main points: banning smoking in public places,
banning tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion, and
including pictorial warnings on cigarette packs.
“Lebanon has to honor its national obligations,” says Zaatari.
“There has to be acceptance of the notion that the freedom
of the smoker stops when it infringes on the well-being of the
people around them and their right for clean air.”
One needn’t be in Lebanon long to notice the ubiquity of tobacco
use. Wreaths of pungent smoke waft through cafés, bars, offices
and taxis, and in social life an offer of a cigarette is almost always
on the table. With no restrictive laws on advertising in public
areas, marketing campaigns often focus their efforts around
schools, colleges and universities.
The numbers are indeed staggering.
Forty-three percent of Lebanese adult males are cigarette
smokers, one of the highest rates in the Middle East, according
to the latest figures of the National Tobacco Control Program
(NTCP). Thirty-two percent of females age 24 and above currently
use tobacco products, which include cigarettes and the water
pipe. Jordan is a distant second in the region at 7 percent.
According to Zaatari, the percentage of women diagnosed with
lung cancer at AUB Medical Center has increased from 3 percent
to 25 percent over the past two decades. He attributes this to
aggressive campaigns by the tobacco and advertising industries
to make smoking seem glamorous, sexy and feminine.
Lebanese youths are acutely affected. Twelve percent of 13-15
year-olds smoke cigarettes. Sixty percent of teenagers have tried
or regularly use the water pipe, in contrast to 6 percent in the
United Kingdom. And an estimated 75 percent of children are
regularly exposed to second-hand smoke.
Lebanese smokers are also among the heaviest in the world:
adults consume an estimated 7.8 billion cigarettes per year — 12
times as many cigarette packs per month as Singapore, and three
times as many as Syria.
Lebanon keeps no official figures on tobacco-related illnesses
and deaths, Dr. Georges Saade, NTCP coordinator in the Ministry
page 41
& alumni bulletin
“What we have in Lebanon is insulting and
deplorable when it comes to tobacco use.”
—Ghazi Zaatari, chair, Department of Pathology and
Tobacco’s social and economic toll
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
he Lebanese see themselves, not without reason, as
the tastemakers of the Middle East. Trends in fashion,
literature, cuisine, medicine, exercise and technology are
often cultivated in Lebanon before spreading throughout the
region.
There is one international and regional trend, however,
that has left the Lebanese lagging noticeably behind: antitobacco legislation. Given the country’s alarmingly high tobacco
consumption and the scientific evidence stacked up against
smoking, experts say this is a fad the country cannot afford to
ignore.
“What we have in Lebanon is insulting and deplorable when
it comes to tobacco use,” says Dr. Ghazi Zaatari, chair of the
WHO Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation and chair of
the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the
American University of Beirut (AUB).
Unlike many other countries in the Middle East, Lebanon
has no viable national tobacco control policy. It falls
behind Syria, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, UAE, Egypt and Iran in
implementing measures proven to reduce a population’s
tobacco consumption.
Knowledge of risk is no match for the force of addiction, says
Dr. Rima Nakkash, assistant research professor at the Faculty of
Public Health, AUB. The key factor to high tobacco consumption,
she explains, is the “enabling environment” around an individual,
and this is where the law comes into play.
“The international consensus based on scientific evidence is
that to reduce consumption what you need is a strong framework
of policies working together in different ways,” Nakkash says.
Periodic efforts — from the civil war years up through the
present — to pass tobacco-control legislation have failed for a
number of reasons,.
Lebanon took a step when it ratified the WHO Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2005, joining 170
other countries in a worldwide effort to reduce smoking and
rates of tobacco-related diseases and deaths. But since then, the
government has done little to fulfill its obligation to the treaty.
“Countries with weak governance will sign such conventions
to convey the impression that they are ‘developed,’” Nakkash
says. Failure to follow through elicits little more than a slap on
the wrist from the international community.
Up in Smoke
Tobacco paper turned into art by artist Lianne Mathes Rabbat
of Public Health, told LAU Magazine, but based on countryspecific equations derived from international epidemiology
statisticians, 3,500 people die of smoking-related causes a year.
And smoking is not only costing Lebanon lives, it’s costing
the state money, according to a recent research report by the
AUB Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG), a multidisciplinary
group of faculty established in 1999 to study smoking-related
issues. (Dr. Nakkash is currently its coordinator.)
Titled “The Economics of Tobacco in Lebanon: An Estimation
of the Social Costs of Tobacco Consumption,” the TCRG paper
estimates that the state actually loses about $55 million per
year due to cigarette smoking. After taking into account “various
costs related to tobacco smoking,” including health care costs,
inefficiency costs, costs from lost production, environmental
costs, and costs to non-smokers, the group estimates a $326.7
million overall cost to the economy, as opposed to an estimated
net revenue from tobacco of $271 million.
Roadblocks from big tobacco
Despite the preponderance of evidence of the cumulative
social and economic costs of tobacco in Lebanon, anti-smoking
advocates have a long fight ahead.
According to Saade, the draft law was scheduled to be passed
before May 2010, but was delayed for various and shifting
reasons, from political instability to interference from tobacco
companies and the advertising and hospitality industries.
“I think it definitely will be passed, but I can no longer
speculate on when,” says Saade. “I’m tired of saying ‘this month,’
then ‘this month.’ I feel like I’ve been lying for six months to
the donors who are giving me money to move tobacco control
activities forward in this country.”
Nakkash stresses that it isn’t enough just to get a law —
any law — passed. The devil is in the details, she says, and
an ineffectual law is not so much a good start as a missed
opportunity. She notes that the draft law, for instance, initially
allowed for smoking and non-smoking sections, the very premise
of which has been scientifically discredited.
“Smoke dissipates from one space to another very effectively.
The purpose of having a smoke-free law is to protect from
page 42
exposure to second-hand smoke.”
There is another group paying close attention to the draft
law’s details — the tobacco industry. Agents from multinational
tobacco companies are big players in Lebanon’s financial markets
and hold sway in the political arena. And they stand to lose the
most from robust regulation.
“The tobacco industry is powerful and the Lebanese
government is a partner in tobacco manufacturing through the
state-run regulatory agency, the Régie,” Zaatari explains.
“This is not rocket science,” says Nakkash. The tobacco
advertising and hospitality industries can “infiltrate and water
down policies that are initially strong. The important thing is to
have policy makers on your side who are convinced it’s not OK
to have a watered-down policy.”
Like Saade, Nakkash is certain the draft law will pass but
hesitant to say when or in what form.
“We finally have serious and supportive policy makers on our
side. I’m optimistic,” she says.
The campus scene: smoke-free vs.
smokers’ freedoms
A student sitting on the stairs near the Upper Gate of LAU’s
Beirut campus lights up a cigarette and inhales. “Smoking relaxes
me,” says 20-year-old Omar, who asked that his surname not be
printed. “Lebanon has so many other problems, I don’t really see
how me smoking is anyone’s business.”
In 2008, the administration at AUB made smoking their
business. The campus is now smoke-free even outdoors, except
for small designated areas. According to Nakkash and students
LAU Magazine spoke to, the community is abiding by the rule,
and some smokers even like it.
Saade hopes LAU will follow suit without waiting for passage
of a national law. “It should be a policy of the university; it’s
unacceptable that an international university is not smoke-free,”
he says.
Freshman Najla Abouelias, 18, a smoker, thinks a campus ban
would be a terrible idea. “It would create a lot of traffic at the
gates. I’d say 80 percent of students here smoke and the campus
is kind of small to have smoking areas,” she says.
Photo courtesy of AUB
experts have recently warned of the less-understood dangers
of the water pipe. Commonly known as shisha, nargileh,
argileh, hookah and hubble bubble, it is wildly popular among
men and women of all ages. the decorative body and bowl,
the colorful hose, the slow pulse of the glowing coals and the
pipe’s liquid murmurings give it a glamour all its own, and the
mild sweetness of the water-cooled smoke — so unlike the
acrid heat of cigarette smoke — seems deceptively benign. in
fact, a single session of nargileh smoke delivers as much tar
as an entire pack of cigarettes and contains toxic compounds
such as carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, nitric oxide, arsenic
and other cancer-causing chemicals, according to reports by
the aub tobacco Control Research Group (tCRG).
nargileh tobacco smoking is widely viewed as a social
activity in lebanon and throughout the region. it’s not
uncommon to see groups of elderly lebanese men sitting
outside their shops, leisurely puffing shisha; or a young couple
playing cards for hours at a local café with individual nargilehs.
it’s also popular among tourists looking for an “authentic”
middle eastern experience.
but the water pipe falls under tobacco control laws just like
cigarettes, which proves a double challenge in countries where
the predilection for both is high. Particularly challenging is the
complete lack of health warnings on the boxes of ma’assel, or
nargileh tobacco.
“You’ll find misleading labels that say it has 0 percent
nicotine, 0 percent tar. Some have pictures of healthy and
beautiful looking women. With no control policies in place
you can write anything you want,” says Dr. Rima nakkash,
coordinator of the aub tCRG.
Changing perceptions about nargileh will not be easy, as it
is more fashionable than ever. “a while ago you wouldn’t find
these coffee shops catering to nargileh. they’ve multiplied
enormously and have gotten many more people addicted
along the way,” nakkash says.
page 43
& alumni bulletin
Hooked on Hookah
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
Sophomore mohamad Khansa, an 18-year-old interior
architecture major and non-smoker, is strongly in favor of a
smoke-free lau campus. “i have a right to breathe clean air. Come
on, we’re educated. We should be setting an example,” he says.
in reality, where is a smoke-free campus initiative on lau’s
priority list?
“a few months ago i would have said low,” says Dr. elise
Salem, vice president of Student Development and enrollment
management at lau. “but there has been a resurgence of
interest on this subject from our students,” she says, citing the
mobilization of student groups in byblos, and an open StudentStaff-Faculty Forum dedicated to the topic on the beirut campus
in February, organized by the Dean of Students’ office.
Salem adds: “We have regular and ongoing anti-smoking
awareness campaigns at lau, but we won’t institute a ban just
because aub did it, or because we’re an american university.
With other problems to confront — environmentally, politically
and socially — getting people not only at lau but around
lebanon to agree on the importance of non-smoking policies
will be challenging.”
Salem goes on to underscore the difficulty of introducing
“nanny state” regulations in lebanon, where there’s a libertarian
streak, “a certain defiance.”
even Zaatari knows it would be naive to think implementation
of a smoking ban will be easy and immediate. “but there has to
be a starting point,” he says.
Dr. Raed mohsen, the Dean of Students on lau’s beirut
campus, believes for his part that regulation is a matter of time.
“We cannot not ban smoking at lau,” he says, citing a highly
successful student petition circulated last year for a “smoke free
campus.”
mohsen concedes the likelihood of divisions among faculty,
students and staff over the issue, as well as the difficulty
of designating smoking areas on a small campus. “like all
controversial issues, such proposal has to go through specific
procedures.”
For now, Omar and other smokers can continue puffing away
without worry. Whether it’s the state or the university to move
first in making public places smoke-free, they will have some
thorny hoops to jump through.
New Offerings at LAU
Dean Nancy Hoffart during Nursing Day
LAU Expansion Spawns
New Program Offerings
by marc abi Zeid
lau’s course catalog has thickened noticeably this year, the result
of an unprecedented expansion of program offerings across
disciplines to now include 50 undergraduate and graduate degrees
and 16 minors.
in addition to the b.S. in nutrition introduced last spring,
lau began offering a b.S. in mathematics and a b.S. in nursing
in the fall semester. three new minors have been launched this
semester: legal studies, psychology and english.
all the new programs aside from nursing are in the School
of arts and Sciences. beginning in spring 2011, a minor in
environmental Science will be offered jointly through the School
of arts and Sciences and the School of engineering.
“this stronger push toward expanding the School of arts
and Sciences program offerings came as a consequence of
the university’s strategic plan (2005–10), which induced the
development of an academic plan for the School of arts and
Sciences for the period 2008–2013,” says Dr. Fuad Hashwa, dean
of the School of arts and Sciences in byblos.
page 44
according to Hashwa, the School of arts and Sciences is
currently developing programs in bioinformatics, nanotechnology,
middle eastern studies, foreign languages such as Chinese and
italian, teaching of arabic as a foreign language, teaching of
english as a foreign language, and translation. the programs may
be available as soon as spring 2011 or the next academic year.
“the array of program options is going to make it really hard
to decide on a major,” says Reem afifi, a freshman studying at the
beirut campus. “but then again, that’s why i chose to study at
lau in the first place, not because i was interested in a particular
program, but because i knew i would have options.”
“This stronger push toward expanding the
School of Arts and Sciences program offerings
came as a consequence of the university’s
strategic plan.”
—Fuad Hashwa, dean, School of Arts and Sciences, LAU Byblos
explore an interest or enhance a practical skill, since it is a second
or third language for many of them.
“For me, it’s not about a passion for the language,” says Leia
Haidar, a sophomore psychology major. “It’s more of a strategic
move. A strong level of English is essential to compete in today’s
globalized world.”
page 45
& alumni bulletin
The establishment of the new Alice Ramez Chagoury School
of Nursing and its four-year B.S. program may represent the
single most significant of LAU’s new offerings because of the
opportunities it creates. In addition to admitting students pursuing
a profession in high demand globally, the nursing program
complements the other medically oriented programs at LAU.
“I decided to follow a career path in nursing because it requires
individuals who are caring and attentive to patients at their most
vulnerable moments,” says Yvonne Jleilaty, a new nursing student
at the Byblos campus. She added that she chose LAU over other
universities with nursing programs because of the encouragement
of the staff and faculty of the school, as well as its affiliation with
University Medical Center – Rizk Hospital.
The legal studies and environmental sciences minor programs
are the first of their kind at LAU. They were made possible through
the support of philanthropist Dr. Hanibal Tayeh, the president and
CEO of Spectrum Analytical, a key laboratory in Massachusetts.
Some students are taking advantage of the English minor to
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
New LAU students during an orientation tour on the Beirut campus
Standardized Patient Instructor
Program
Patient-doctor scenario simulation training
LAU Medical School Features
Simulation Training Unique in Lebanon
by marc abi Zeid
building on the success of the Standardized Patient instructor
Program (SPi) introduced last year, lau’s medical school (laumS)
is training its second batch of volunteer actors to accommodate
the increased number of medical students and their higher level
of competency.
Seven new standardized patients are undergoing training led by
Dr. nadia asmar, an laumS faculty member, and Dr. lina abyad,
assistant professor of theater at lau’s School of arts and Sciences,
in addition to the original 10 that have been with the program
since last year. the program allows medical students to examine,
interview and diagnose the standardized patients as they act out
symptoms associated with a particular condition.
“We have gained experience and now we’re improving things,”
asmar says. “We started with the basics last year, and now the cases
are becoming more detailed.”
in august 2009, asmar and abyad themselves received training
from experts at the university of massachusetts in boston to
prepare for the program.
laumS became the first of its kind in lebanon last year to
introduce the doctor-patient simulation program. Commonly
practiced in american medical schools, the program was
recommended to lau by Partners Harvard medical international,
(PHmi) an organization helping with the development of laumS.
“We wanted to bring the program here because it has become
one of the standards for examining physicians,” says Dr. lynn
eckhert, laumS interim dean and a member of PHmi.
“the standardized patients learn how to respond to the medical
students, but they also learn how to give feedback, which is really
important,” eckhert added.
the standardized patients are used during the medical students’
page 46
Objective Structured Clinical examinations, better known as
the OSCe. an OSCe is given after each module to test student
competency.
First-year students are given six OSCes, and second-year students
must complete five. Simulations for second-year students will
be more advanced than what they experienced last year and will
include physical diagnoses. the students so far welcome the new
challenges and remain enthusiastic about the program.
“an intact patient-doctor relationship is crucial, and a key
element in the process of delivering high-quality health care,”
says Jad al Danaf, a second-year medical student. “the lau-SPi
program is putting us on track until we reach our clinical years and
beyond.”
While asmar deals mainly with the medical aspects of the
standardized patients’ training, abyad’s role is to develop their
acting skills so that the simulations are as realistic as possible. both
components are critical to the program’s success.
underscoring the importance of standardization for the
program’s success, abyad said the main challenge is to train the
actors to become, in essence, clones of one another. For example,
abyad explains, when they show pain, they must use the same
words and actions and bellow in the same manner.
“We have one excellent actor who always wants to do a little bit
more. She wants to improvise and be creative, but this is not at all
about being creative,” abyad says. “it’s about being standardized.”
“it’s not just about the wording but about how much to reveal,
because a part of their job is to get the student to ask the right
questions,” abyad adds. “i think a good doctor is someone who
investigates very well, who is a very good detective, so they must
ask the right questions.”
Regional Programming
Contest at LAU
Group photo of ACPC participants
Regional Programming Contest Draws
Record-Breaking Turnout at LAU
By Marc Abi Zeid
The first-, second- and third-place teams came from Egypt,
representing the German University in Cairo, the Faculty of
Computers and Information at Cairo University, and the Faculty
of Engineering at Alexandria University, respectively. The top two
teams solved 7 out of 9 problems correctly, while the third-place
winners solved 6 out of 9.
& alumni bulletin
ACPC participants during the contest
page 47
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
Nearly 200 undergraduate and graduate students from universities
throughout the Middle East visited Beirut November 25–27 for the
13th Arab Collegiate Programming Contest (ACPC) at LAU.
The event witnessed record-breaking participation this year, with
57 three-member teams from 32 universities in 13 Arab countries
racing the clock — and each other — to solve as many of the nine
programming problems correctly as possible. Past participation had
never exceeded 43 teams.
“What we had here were the most brilliant student programmers,
all under one roof, who came from some of the top technical
universities,” said Dr. Samer Habre, chair of LAU Beirut’s Computer
Science and Mathematics Department, which organized the event.
“We were able to promote excellence in programming, excellence
in computer science, and excellence in education,” Habre added.
The teams, each accompanied by a faculty adviser, were barred
from leaving their computer stations, which were neatly assembled
on the first and second floors of LAU’s Learning Resource Center.
The participants were also restricted from using any electronic
devices for the duration of the five-hour contest.
The contest marks the first time ACPC comes to Lebanon since
its establishment in 1998. LAU is also scheduled to host the contest
next year.
“I think the charm of Beirut is an element,” said Dr. Ziad Najem,
ACPC director and assistant professor in the Department of
Mathematics and Computer Science at Kuwait University.
Describing the contest, Najem added: “As universities become
more experienced, we work to make the problem sets more
advanced. The students drive us to become more challenging.”
Several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Bahrain,
were represented for the first time in this year’s contest.
Alumni Profiles
Faiza Fawaz Estrup ’51
Dr. Faiza Fawaz estrup graduated from lau (then bCW) with an associate of arts
degree in 1951. after receiving a b.a. in Physics from boston university in 1953, estrup
went on to Yale university to pursue her m.S. and Ph.D. in molecular biophysics and
biochemistry. there she met her future husband, fellow Higgins Scholar Peder estrup,
a Fulbright Fellow from Denmark. the couple was married in Copenhagen in 1960.
estrup fondly recalls her time at lau, and says her professors inspired her to pursue
her studies in the natural sciences at a time when it was rare for women to do so.
“lau taught me to be an independent thinker, and it strengthened my determination
to succeed, to become a leader in whatever field i eventually decided on.”
in 1975, estrup obtained her m.D. degree from brown university School of medicine.
after a two-year fellowship in rheumatology, estrup opened a private practice, and
served as medical director of the arthritis Center and as Chief of Rheumatology at
memorial Hospital in Rhode island.
estrup was voted the Rhode island Woman Physician of the Year in 2002, won
brown university medical School’s excellence in teaching award the same year,
and was chosen as one of america’s top Physicians for the years 2003–2007 by the
Consumers Research Council of america.
She and her husband retired from brown in 2004 and moved permanently to
Santa barbara, California. they travel extensively, and last visited lebanon in 2008. Dr.
estrup’s brother, Dr. adnan Fawaz, recently retired as professor of political science &
international relations and law from lau.
Rony Zeenny, Pharm.D.,
Clinical Assistant Professor ’04
Dr. Rony Zeenny graduated from lau with a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy and
completed lau’s Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2004. He then completed his
pharmacy practice residency in the united States at the university of tennessee
medical Center in Knoxville, tennessee.
after returning to lebanon, Zeenny worked with the World Health Organization at
the lebanese ministry of Public Health’s Drug Dispensing Center before joining the
lau faculty in 2006. He has served as director of experiential education at the School
of Pharmacy since October 2010.
Zeeny credits lau’s “rich and harmonized pharmacy curriculum,” and his exposure
as an undergraduate to brilliant faculty members, for having instilled his sense of
passion and ambition. ”lau not only provided me with pharmacy education, but
also triggered my professional curiosity and inspired me to go above and beyond the
Doctor of Pharmacy degree,” Zeeny told lau magazine.
Zeenny is an active member of many committees and professional societies,
including the american Society of Health-System Pharmacists (aSHP) and the
lebanese Order of Pharmacists. He currently serves as president of the middle east
Chapter of the american Clinical College of Pharmacy (aCCP).
His research interests include dialysis and antibiotics resistance in clinical
practice.
page 48
Alumni Events
Alumni Events
LAU energizes North American
alumni with Yalla! 2010 events
page 49
& alumni bulletin
eight different hotel rooms, nine flights, several car trips, and nearly 16,000
kilometers across two countries in 16 days. that was Yalla! 2010.
this long journey took lau Vice President for university advancement Richard
Rumsey and Director of alumni and Special Projects in north america edward
Shiner to lau alumni-sponsored events in 10 cities across the united States and
Canada in just over a two-week period last november.
they were joined by lau President Dr. Joseph G. Jabbra and alumni Relations
Director abdallah al Khal for some of the events along the way.
beginning with a cruise in tampa bay, Florida, on november 6, and ending with a
lebanese independence Day celebration in San Francisco, California, on november
22, Yalla! 2010 connected hundreds of alumni and friends at various dinners and
receptions in boston, Detroit, los angeles, montreal, new York, toronto, Washington,
D.C., and even a bowling alley in Ottawa, Canada.
the goal was to invigorate the alumni and underline their importance as vital
members of the university family, create awareness of lau in north america, and
help kick off a fundraising campaign to rally support around student scholarships.
“We had a genuine opportunity to connect with hundreds of alumni and friends
of lau from all over north america, and truly understand and respect what a global
institution we are,” Rumsey said. “that really was our main goal for Yalla! 2010, and
by every measure it turned out to be an overwhelming success.”
Conceived by members of lau’s new York office, in conjunction with the
university’s alumni chapters throughout north america, Yalla! 2010 was promoted
with photos, alumni profiles, articles and announcements using the university’s
various social media outlets, including Facebook, twitter, Youtube and Flickr.
During the two weeks, thousands of people also visited Yalla! 2010’s dedicated
blog (www.yalla2010.com), to view photos and watch videos of the events as they
happened as well as read blog posts about the journey.
Yalla! 2010 was such a galvanizing event that it inspired new York-based lau
alum Khalil Kanaan to provide a generous $10,000 gift — he calls it a “challenge
grant” — to encourage other alumni of the university to support scholarship
programs.
“We’re looking forward to the energy of Yalla! carrying over into the fundraising
campaign for the rest of the year,” Rumsey said. “Khalil Kanaan’s generous gift has
helped us make Yalla! 2010 into something more than simply a collection of events,
which is exactly what we were hoping for when we conceived this idea.”
Kanaan said he was impressed with the Yalla! campaign and wants to continue
its momentum while investing in education. He added, “it is something that i truly
believe in and i hope others will join me.”
Yalla! will not be a one-time event. Plans are already under way for Yalla! 2011,
which lau officials expect will cover even more ground, organize more people and
raise more awareness and support for the university around the world.
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
by Greg Houle
Alumni Events
Hundreds of alumni return to LAU
for reunion and homecoming
by marc abi Zeid
Hundreds of nostalgic alumni from all years and disciplines came together over the
summer to reconnect with former classmates during a series of activities organized
as part of the 2010 alumni Reunion and Homecoming event held July 14–17.
the activities kicked off on July 14 with a dinner at le Particulier restaurant in
Sodeco. Special guests Dr. Selim el Sayegh (’83), lebanese minister of Social affairs,
and emily abi Rashed nasrallah (’56), the novelist and activist, received alumni
awards for their achievements.
Graduates from louaize, amchit and byblos reunited on July 15 on the byblos
campus, while beirut and Sidon graduates assembled on July 16 in beirut. the
classes of ’05, ’00, ’95, ’90, ’85, ’80, ’75, ’70, ’65, and ’60 were presented with jubilee
pins to recognize their graduation anniversaries.
the four-day event was generously supported by the bank of beirut, which
since 2006 has partnered with the university to offer a special “affinity” credit card
to all lau faculty, staff and alumni. a portion of every affinity card transaction is
transferred from the bank to the university as a cardholder contribution.
lau President Dr. Joseph G. Jabbra addressed the alumni, highlighting recent
lau achievements such as the new medical and nursing schools and accreditation
from the new england association of Schools and Colleges.
“What is really important about this institution is its spirit — its commitment to
academic excellence and excellence in everything we do,” Jabbra said.
“it doesn’t really matter who you are, where you come from, what your religion
is, what your political stripe is, what socioeconomic status you happen to have,”
Jabbra added. “as long as you are qualified and willing to work very hard to earn an
education, we welcome you with open arms.”
abdallah al Khal, director of the alumni Relations Office, which organized the
homecoming, presented remarks during the beirut reunion on July 16. He spoke of
the activities of the alumni association board — and of the more than 30 alumni
chapters scattered across the globe — in building a highly dynamic network.
“the alumni Relations Office has also worked to provide alumni with continuous
educational opportunities,” al Khal told the crowd. “Several lectures were organized
throughout the year on topics as diverse as marketing for non-marketers, emotional
intelligence, body language and so on.”
the four-day event was a first for many. Dr. Hana itani (’99), a molecular biologist
now living in the united States, attended the homecoming and described the
excitement of getting back in touch with lau classmates and mentors.
“lau has been a home to me. it provided me with opportunities and ambition,”
said itani, who went on to earn her Ph.D. from the university of iowa in 2008.
“my undergraduate mentors were the ones who encouraged me to be what i am
today.”
as the event drew to a close on the morning of the 17th, Dr. Jabbra hosted the
annual President’s Forum brunch on the beirut campus and welcomed all alumni
and their families.
page 50
June
Toronto Alumni Chapter picnic
more than 60 alumni brought their families and friends to a picnic held on June 5 at
etobicoke Centennial Park in toronto, where they enjoyed a host of activities including
face-painting and raffles.
July
50th anniversary graduation
On July 27, the lau alumni association board honored 50th anniversary graduates at
lau President Joseph G. Jabbra’s residence, where they were presented with medals.
Florida Alumni Chapter SeaWorld visit
the Florida alumni Chapter organized a trip to SeaWorld
in Orlando in July.
August
Toronto Alumni Chapter breakfast
the toronto alumni Chapter organized its second annual breakfast at adam’s Park in
Scarborough on august 8.
LAU and AUB alumni joint Suhour in Damascus
more than 200 alumni from lau and the american university of beirut came together
for a joint Suhour on august 27 at the Gemini Club in Damascus.
the School of Pharmacy alumni Chapter organized an iftar dinner on September 6 at
babel Restaurant in Dbayeh. in addition to the friends and family of lau pharmacists,
Dr. Ziad nassour, head of the Order of Pharmacists in lebanon, also attended the
event.
Bahrain Alumni Chapter Ghabga night
lau’s bahrain alumni Chapter organized its
annual Ghabga on September 7 at the Gulf
Hotel, drawing local alumni and their friends
and families.
page 51
& alumni bulletin
School of Pharmacy Alumni Chapter Iftar
VOlume 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
September
Alumni Events
Alumni Relations Office student outreach
the alumni Relations Office participated for the second year in the new Students
Orientation Program on September 16 and 17, when it presented the fresh recruits
with souvenirs and brochures containing information about the alumni association
and its benefits after graduation.
Aleppo Alumni Chapter Suhour
the aleppo alumni Chapter organized its Suhour on
September 16 at the Solo Cafe. more than 40 alumni
and friends attended the event.
October
Alumni Association Board election
On October 25, the chapter also held alumni association board elections for vice
president, which resulted in the reelection of Doha el Zein Halawi (class of ’81) for a
three-year term.
Abu Dhabi Alumni Chapter’s busy October
the abu Dhabi alumni Chapter presented a check in the amount of $80,000 in October
to lau’s Scholarship Fund. the amount was collected through fundraising events
organized by the chapter during the 2009–10 academic year.
Finally, on October 29, the chapter organized a Halloween party at the Yacht Club of
the interContinental Hotel in abu Dhabi, with more than 300 alumni and friends in
attendance.
Detroit Alumni Chapter LCN mixer
the Detroit alumni Chapter partnered with the lebanese
american Heritage Club and arab Detroit for a mixer on
October 7, hosted by the lebanese Collegiate network. more
than 100 professionals attended the mixer to meet old friends
and make new contacts.
page 52
Alumni News
Alumni News
Azadouhi Kalaidjian (B.A. ’60) was recently
awarded the St. Mesrob Mashdots Medal by
Armenian Archbishop Kegham Khatcherian for her
services to the Armenian community throughout
the years.
Farid Abboud (B.S. ’91) launched an online
consulting company, www.okdoable.com, in June
2010. He had previously been working in the United
States for the past five years as a consultant for web
design and development.
Taline Voskeritchian (B.A. ’68) lives in Boston with her cat,
Splendid, and teaches writing at Boston University. She lost her
husband, Ohannes Salibian, three years ago. Her daughter, Tamar,
lives in Los Angeles and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Media Studies.
Nada Yamout (B.S. ’91, M.B.A. ’96) is currently the head of Group
Operational Risk Management at Byblos Bank. She is also a part-time
instructor at the Lebanese University. In May 2010, she was elected
as a member of the Beirut Municipality Council.
Daisy Sarkis Warren (B.A. ’73) married
David Warren in 1986 and has one daughter,
Jeanette. She lived in San Diego, California,
from 1979 to 1996, where she received an M.A.
in Education, an M.A. in Special Education, and
an Ed.D. in Counseling. She is currently a full-time assistant professor
at Haigazian University.
Martha Noujaim Zarazir (B.S. ’91) married
Frederic Zarazir in 2006, and they have a lovely
daughter, Sophie. Martha is currently the marketing
manager of Dunkin’ Donuts for Lebanon, Jordan
and Egypt.
Rima Adnan Rifai (B.A. ’84) currently works as a graphic designer
and teaches at the Université Saint-Esprit De Kaslik.
Abdallah Moussa Shafie (M.B.A. ’84) currently
lives in Boston where he and his wife, Varsenig
Yapoudjian (B.S. ’74), operate a successful dry
cleaning and tailoring business. The couple has
been married for 34 years and raised two daughters,
Natalie and Nancy.
Nada Lutfi (B.S. ’90) went on to earn a Teaching Diploma of Science
from the American University of Beirut. She taught science courses
at several schools, most recently at Al Hoda High School where she
taught chemistry, biology and physics from 2000 till 2009. She got
married to a UK citizen in 2009, and since then she has settled in
the UK.
Abdul Majeed Zantout (B.S. ’90) is married to Nour Shebaro (B.S.
’91) with two children. Zantout works as the country manager for a
company called International Turnkey Systems, while Shebaro is the
HR director of MTC Touch.
Mona Tabbara Usher (B.A. ’90) recently celebrated
her 20th wedding anniversary.
Rania Hammoud (B.S. ’93 and M.S. ’97) moved
back to Beirut a few months ago, after living in
Montreal for almost 10 years. She found a job as an
IT project manager in a software company. In her
free time, she works as a life coach to help people
reach objectives and remove obstacles in their
professional and personal lives.
Maher Kaddoura (B.S. ’95) works as an administration manager at
Gulf Fluor, Abu Dhabi. He completed an M.B.A. in 2010 at Abu Dhabi
University.
Hilda Abla (B.A. ’96) currently works at Pin-Pay
sal, the first mobile payment and mobile banking
company in Lebanon. Abla, an amateur actress,
has participated in several plays since 2004, most
recently in Ekher Beit Bel Gemmayzeh, directed by
Betty Taoutel and performed at Theatre Monnot
and Beryte in May-June/Oct 2010.
Mirna Laycy Stouhi (B.S. ’96, M.B.A. ’00)
married film director Salim Turk. The couple has
two children, Ibrahim and Myriam.
Nadine Moubayed (B.S. ’97, M.S. ’02) married after graduation,
and then traveled to Italy, where she gave birth to her first daughter
seven years ago. She later moved to Saudi Arabia where she had her
second daughter. She currently teaches at King Saud University for
girls, Medicine and Science Department.
Abeer Haidar (B.A. ’98) works at the Abu Dhabi International
School in Abu Dhabi.
Nazih Faraj (B.S. ’98, M.S. ’02) currently works in a governmental
institute in Dubai.
page 53
& alumni bulletin
Samia AbouZeid Khoury (B.A. ’84) married Elie B. Khoury in 1991
and had four children, Natalie, Dominique, Peter and Gabrielle. She
has been practicing martial arts over the past four years and hopes
to earn a black belt in February 2011. She lives in the United States
with her family and works as a financial sales consultant at PNC Bank
in Princeton, New Jersey.
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
Lina Ghazi (B.S. ’80) took over her mother’s travel agency, Ghazi
Travel, after she died in 2003. She has expanded the company, which
has grown to become one of Lebanon’s leading travel agencies.
Samir Gharzeddine (B.S. ’93) moved to Jeddah after graduation
where he has been working as an IT manager for a car company.
He is a member of the International Who’s Who for professional
contributions to the business community. He married Rana in 2002
and they have two girls, Celine and Cybelle.
Alumni News
Nadine Maktabi (B.S. ’98, M.B.A. ’01) moved back to Lebanon
from Riyadh in 2006 where she was working as a media manager
for JWT advertising agency. She got married in 2001 and has three
children, Karen, Abdallah and Celina. Nadine and her husband,
Hassan Maktabi, just opened a Persian rug boutique in Ashrafieh,
called Cyrus Maktabi.
Elissar Saddy (B.S. ’01) works as an acting offshore production
manager at Hodema Consulting Services.
Nahla Jeha Saleh (B.A. ’98) worked for some
time at the Abu Dhabi International School as a
kindergarten coordinator and supervisor. She was
elected secretary of the LAU Abu Dhabi Alumni
Chapter for one year. In 2005, she married Bassel
Saleh and had her first child, Bana, the following year. They welcomed
a son, Omar, into the world two years later.
Assaad Matar (B.E. ’02) recently celebrated the
birth of his daughter, Nour.
Maïa Maatalani Fayad (B.A. ’00) began working as a client account
handler at DDB Levant/Strategies advertising agency after graduating.
She later supervised the PR and Marketing Department of Aïshti
Group. For the last three years, she has headed the Marketing and
Communications Department at Byblos Bank Group.
Lara Nasr (B.Arch. ’00, M.B.A. ’03) has
pursued a career in art. She has exhibited her
works at the Agora Gallery in New York, and
the Shahine Gallery and Eclectic Art Shop in
Beirut.
Nourhan N. Beyrouti (B.S. ’01, M.B.A. ’04)
married Dania M. Mneimenh (B.S. ’05, M.B.A.
’08). They became parents on June 7, 2010 when
Leya was born, first granddaughter of Dr. Nouri M.
Beyrouti, professor at LAU’s School of Business.
Raef Hachache (A.A.S. ’01) and Nadine Marashli
(B.S. ’04) became parents over the summer of 2010
when Salim was born.
Sylvana Bitar Karam (B.A. ’02) welcomed her
second girl, Sienna, into the world on June 11, 2010.
Merva Faddoul (B.A. ’01) recently won a grant
from the National Geographic Society to direct a
film in Lebanon called Teta. The movie, which is
also written by Faddoul, is set in Byblos and tells the
story of a teenager and her grandmother when the
latter discovers a miracle in her backyard.
Nina Rahal-Lott (B.Arch. ’01) was granted a scholarship in 2004
to pursue a Master of Philosophy at the Glasgow School of Arts in
Scotland that she completed in 2006. She worked for two architecture
companies in the United Kingdom until June 2010. Recently, she
moved to France with her husband and is working on establishing
an independent practice.
Tarek Renno (B.S. ’01) headed to the United States
after graduating from LAU to pursue a master’s
degree in Nebraska. He worked for JP Morgan
Chase-NY in investment banking for five years after
completing his master’s. While on a short visit to
Beirut, he met his wife-to-be and decided to move
back for good. He now manages Beesline.
page 54
Carl Ayat (B.S. ’02) currently works at Fortune
Promoseven, an ad agency.
Maya Harb Njeim (B.E. ’02) is the procurement
manager and HR head at Phoenix Machinery
- Indevco Group. She has a newborn baby boy,
Anthony.
Shadi F. Braish (M.B.A. ’03) got engaged in July
2010 to Hala K. Abu Asi. He works at Universal
Media Dubai (UM-HQ) and was recently promoted
to associate media director.
Darine Chaaya (B.A. ’03, M.A. ’06) married
Charbel Chaaya in July 2009 and welcomed a son,
Elvin, into the world on August 9, 2010.
George Daher (B.E. ’03) recently launched GSE, an electric supplies
company with an on-call, 24/7 maintenance team.
Bilal Ezzo (B.S. ’03, M.B.A. ’06) moved to Europe
and worked for a Dutch company, after having
worked for seven years at LAU’s library. During a
business trip in Sweden, he met his old classmate.
They got married in 2010, and recently celebrated
the birth of their baby girl. Currently, Bilal works as
MENA QA/QC manager for an American company
based in the UAE/KSA.
Dany Nachabé (B.S. ’03, M.S. ’06, M.B.A. ’09)
recently celebrated the birth of his daughter, Tala.
Amir Sabra (B.S. ’03) opened an outdoor media
company called SABRA GROUP after graduating.
Sabra tied the knot in June 2009.
Basma Zeidan (B.A. ’03) founded an education consulting firm
named EduConsult, LLC in May 2010 to improve education in the
MENA region. Prior to establishing the firm, she worked as a program
manager for the Executive M.B.A. program at the London Business
School in Dubai and London, served as a consultant at the University
of the Middle East Project in Boston, and was a second grade teacher
at Eastwood College in Lebanon.
Youssef Abdul Latif Tabsh (B.S. ’04, M.B.A.
’07) works as a motor claims assessor with Arope
Insurance. He married Basma Ibrahim in July 2010.
Fadi Hammoud (M.B.A. ’04) works as the
operations manager in Bahrain for Azadea Group.
He and his wife, Farah, had a boy, Marcel, on October
21, 2010.
Rita Sayah Nehmeh (B.A. ’04) married Henry
Nehmeh in August 2008 and gave birth to their
daughter, Selina, in May 2010.
M. Raafat Ouwayda (B.S. ’04, M.B.A. ’06) worked at Ernst & Young
Consulting in Saudi Arabia for two years, before getting married in
2008. Currently, he works as a freelance management consultant.
Diana Saleh (B.S. ’07) was married during the
summer of 2010 and now lives in Dubai.
Khaled Abdel Ghani (B.S. ’08) is now working in
Saudi Arabia at the Al Hassan Ghazi Ibrahim Shaker
Co. He recently got engaged to Gihan Chemali, with
a wedding date set for July 7, 2011.
Karen Irani Riachi (B.S. ’04) worked for some time with IMPACT
BBDO as senior art director. She married music producer Jean-Marie
Riachi two years ago and recently had her first boy, Edy.
Lamar Adnan Choucair (B.A. ’08, M.A. ’11)
recently got engaged to Wassim Choucair, with a
wedding planned for spring 2012.
Nader Cheaib (B.S. ‘05) is currently a postdoctoral research fellow
at the Systems Design Engineering Department of the University of
Waterloo in Canada.
Ramzy Dib (B.E. ’08) recently launched a corporate event
management company, CODE Productions sarl, with fellow LAU
classmates Jules Khoury (B.E. ’01) and Nadine Njeim, a business
student who expects to graduate in 2011. Dib also joined forces with
LAU graduates Georges Maljian (B.S. ’05) and Paola Ghanimeh
(B.S. ’07) to start a popular sushi bar in Gemmayzeh, KIO.
Lima Farran (B.S. ’05) moved to Dubai with her
family after graduation, where they opened a spa.
She took a media and communication course, and
worked as a presenter for Al Deera TV and Fawasel
TV. She now lives between Dubai and Lebanon,
where she recently opened a cafe/restaurant, R&R,
near LAU’s lower gate.
Bechir Hasbani (B.E. ’08) currently works at Somiral Energy, SARL.
Said Mourad (B.S. ’08) is a senior product specialist
at Gulf Medical Company in Riyadh.
Hala Manuel Hazim (B.A. ’05) is the personal assistant for the
Board of Chairmen, CEO, CFO and COO of Inkript Holding sal.
Dr. Cynthia Georges El-Hajal (Pharm.D. ’09)
works as a promotional product specialist in
oncology at Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company.
Haitham Ghaddaf (B.S. ’06, M.B.A. ’09) currently
works at the Bir Hassan Branch of BLF Bank. He
recently got engaged to Layal El Zoghbi.
Ziad Ghandour (B.S. ’09) works as a senior data analyst at Unitech,
a construction material company. He began a master’s in financial
economics in fall 2010 at the American University of Beirut.
Kevork Hagopian (B.S. ’06) returned to Aleppo, Syria, after
graduating from LAU and worked with his family’s company Al
Watania that manufactures PVC products and other raw materials.
He earned an online M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix in 2009.
Anthony Ghosh (B.E. ’09) is working at INDEVCO Group–UTM as a
mechanical engineer in the maintenance department.
Mohamad Mouheb (B.S. ’06) lives in Dubai where he has been
working for BlackBerry for almost two years as sales manager
handling the SMB Team for the UAE and carrier manager handling
MTC Touch Lebanon.
Mohamed Abboud (B.S. ’07) works as the Central
Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa supplier
relationship manager for Growth Market Supplier.
Tahani Khaled (B.S. ’07) got married in December 2009. She has
one child and is currently working in the IT field at CSC Bank.
Adnan Ragheb (B.S. ’09) just completed a Master in Finance at
Lancaster University Management School in the United Kingdom
and is now working at Audi Capital in between Lebanon and Saudi
Arabia as an assistant portfolio manager.
Rabea Kamal Ragheb (B.S. ’09) recently received
a Master of Logistics and Supply Chain Management
from the University of Lancaster in the United
Kingdom.
Mazen Gharzeddine (B.S. ’10) currently lives
in Saudi Arabia, where he works as a sales section
manager handling 11 stores in the country’s eastern
and central regions.
Farah Makarem (B.S. ’07, M.B.A. ’09) recently got
engaged to Samer Bou Dargham (B.S. ’06). They
are planning to marry in the summer of 2012.
page 55
& alumni bulletin
Ghassan F. Hammoud (B.S. ’06) currently works
in Abu Dhabi as a business development expert. He
and his wife, Rima Kassem, had a boy, Farid, in May
2010.
Nader Kawash (B.E. ’09) is a cost control engineer and junior
project engineer in Abu Dhabi at CCC, Sicon Branch.
VOLUME 13 | issue nº 1 | Spring 2011
Aram Kazandjian (B.E. ’05) is currently expanding his father’s water
heating systems company, named Sunny Solar Systems.
Why I Give Back
Khalil Kanaan ’93
WHY I GIVE BACK
Khalil Kanaan ’93
What year did you graduate from LAU?
i attended lau from 1991 until 1993. lau helped me transfer to
Georgia tech to complete my b.S. in engineering and i received
a b.S. degree from lau in 1995.
What degree did you receive?
b.S. General Science.
Which campus did you attend?
amchit.
Where do you live now?
new York.
What is your occupation?
Portfolio manager.
Why do you give to LAU?
i believe in investing in human capital. unfortunately, for
many young lebanese adults, college tuition is an impossible
proposition. For that reason, it is the duty of every alumni to
contribute to the cause of education because it is the absolute
best mean to leverage the richness of our multicultural
background.
page 56
The sky is the limit for Ghassan Aridi,
one of the most recognized figures in
the world of tourism consulting.
His innovations span continents, and
he has advised tourism ministries
in Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Kuwait,
Spain, Brazil and South Africa.
 Ghassan Aridi
is the Legacy and the PRomise.
The founder and manager of the Dubai-based Alpha Tours
is a generous friend of LAU.
For more information, please contact:
Beirut Development Office
Tel. (961) 1 786456 Ext: 1323
Fax (961) 1 803658
P.O. Box 13-5053
Chouran Beirut 1102 2801, Lebanon
Email: development@lau.edu.lb
New York Development Office
Tel. (212) 870 2592
Fax (212) 870 2762
475 Riverside Drive, Suite 1846
New York, NY 10115-0065, USA
Email: nydevelopment@lau.edu
Beirut Campus
P.O. Box 13-5053
Chouran Beirut, 1102 2801
Lebanon
Tel. +961 1 786456 / 64
Fax +961 1 867098
Byblos Campus
P.O. Box 36, Byblos, Lebanon
Tel. +961 9 547254 / 63
Fax +961 9 944851
New York Office
475 Riverside Drive, Suite 1846
New York, NY 10115 0065
USA
Tel. +1 212 870 2592
Fax +1 212 870 2762
www.lau.edu.lb